


Going Home

by LostNTheShadows



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2009-11-11
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-04 08:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 34,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1772461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostNTheShadows/pseuds/LostNTheShadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since she was seven Madeline’s been a foster child, bouncing from family to uncaring family as she struggles to get by. Her solitary escape is into her favorite book, <i>The Labyrinth</i>, where she finds the shred of comfort she needs to push on.  To her it feels like home, the one constant in her life.  Her escape.  Turning eighteen means Madeline is spit out of the system for good, leaving her well and truly alone.  With nothing left to lose Madeline takes an insane gamble and says the words she’s been longing to say for years, desperate for answers about a life she barely remembers and the few pieces that remain that are something from a fairy tale.  Someone answers her call and Madeline quickly realizes she should have been careful what she wished for for home could be a thing of nightmares masquerading as a dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Foster Number Five

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea a few years ago while I was bedridden for days with a plague illness that just wouldn't leave me. I was on a Labyrinth bender and the story just wouldn't get itself out of my head. I'm still writing it, slowly but surely, and I will finish it. Eventually.

Maybe being a foster kid wouldn’t have been so bad if Madeline couldn’t remember her parents. It would have been better if her brain made them not exist. But their faces haunted her. They were there, laughing and smiling, and she was happy. Then she was in darkness and when she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the brightness of a room that was quickly slipping from her memory but in a shadowed dorm with rows of beds. Some of the bodies under the blankets were coughing. Madeline wasn’t, but she pulled the blankets up to her chin anyway to keep it all out.

Sure those memories of happiness faded over time but the smiling faces were still seared into Madeline’s brain. Yes. It would have been easier if they weren’t there at all.

Number Five wasn’t as bad as the others. At least she wasn’t being beaten or starved or locked in closets. She was too old to be pushed around like that now but it was a different story when she was seven. Even now, the story was still somewhat the same – Number Five didn’t have pain, but it had loneliness. They all did.

Madeline glanced over her shoulder at the tattered red book on her nightstand. Her rock. The Labyrinth was her escape, her security blanket from the first time she’d opened her eyes in the orphanage. There it was, right next to her bed all those years ago, and there it still sat. When the pain of it all got to be too much, she’d curl into a cocoon on whatever bed she had and lose herself in The Labyrinth. She always felt safe there, even if it was just all in her mind.

He kept her safe no matter where she was.

At some point between Foster Two and Three, Madeline was the one coughing in the orphanage this time around and when she went to crack open her salvation, something fell into her lap. When she picked it up, the shine of the small crystal pendant nearly blinded her. In the shape of an over-curved boomerang, it looked like the symbol at the head of one of the chapters in her book. The Goblin King’s symbol. She held it up in front of her and its pendulum swing entranced her. But Madeline was afraid to handle it too much. It was so delicate. The chain the pendant clung to was spun of such fine silver, it might as well been made of wisps of smoke.

Madeline fastened it around her neck that day in the orphanage and it never came off. She looked at it in the mirror now and it glimmered back at her as brilliantly as the day it tumbled out of her book. It never needed to be cleaned and whenever her life turned to turmoil, as it so often did, it filled her heart with the notion of home.

Madeline’s only home existed in the fantasy land in her mind. She sighed as she touched her fingers to the dainty pendant. She wished she could be as happy in her waking life as she was in her sleeping one.

The pendant came when she was twelve. He started coming when she was sixteen. At least Madeline thought it was him, the Goblin King. There were no pictures of him in her book so he could only be what her mind wanted him to be. He always looked the same in every dream he made his way into. A handsome unrivaled by any man she’d seen. His mane of blonde hair whipped across his face when they stood on wind-swept hills overlooking his Labyrinth kingdom. He glimmered like her pendant and wore a matching one, much larger and grander, that fell to the center of his chest. She’d touched it a few times and even in her dreams she could feel the weight of it in her hand. His clothes were of pure fantasy – leggings and boots, all manner of elaborate capes that fluttered around her when she was close, loose-fitting shirts or high-buttoned collars that denoted where they were going that night.

He would look at her with a longing that was otherwise inappropriate for a man like him to be looking at a girl like her. But he was safe. He was home. She could feel his fingertips on her cheeks when she woke up. The warmth of his body wrapped around her like a blanket even though she was the only one in her bed. Often she would wake up crying for what she’d lost when she opened her eyes. Waking was painful and she was tired of doing it.

Madeline sighed again and smoothed out her dress for the hundredth time. The emerald fabric made her eyes stand out brilliantly against her dark features. Her hair, night against her pale skin, was tousled on top of her head, leaving her shoulders bare in the strapless dress. She wanted her pendant to shine, not be hidden by her nest of hair. The dress fit her body to the top of her hips and puffed out to just brush her knees. The heels she wore thinned her legs under the flare of her dress and completed the look of someone far older than eighteen.

At least in a few days.

The image that reflected back at her belied happiness, having it together. What it really should have reflected was the despair of losing the fosters for good, even if most of them were crap. Foster Number Five was by far the best but they made it abundantly clear that she was no longer their responsibility when she turned eighteen. Days left. No longer could Madeline curl up into The Labyrinth in her mind to escape it all. That would get her nowhere but in a box on the street. Her mind may have been in fantasy but her head remained in reality. In a few days she’d be truly, utterly alone in a desolate studio downtown that she’d rented for next to nothing. She didn’t care what the kids at school would say about that. She never did anymore. Madeline had long ago become impervious to their harsh words. It came with the territory of bouncing from home to home her entire life. Or most of it at least.

But right now was a time for celebration! At least that’s what Number Five told her. To celebrate her birthday they were taking her to one of their museum galas. How stuffy. She’d be the youngest one there for sure and she’d be bored completely out of her mind. So much . . . fun?

Pounding on her bedroom door rattled Madeline out of her daze and her eyes darted to the wood shaking in its hinges.

“C’mon, Reject. Mom and Dad want you downstairs now.”

Feet thudded down the hallway and Madeline pressed her fingertips to her temple. Unreal Sibling number whatever. He was Foster Number Five’s real son. He didn’t like Madeline’s competition. Not that she ever put up much of a fight. He just never made her forget that she’d never be part of their family.

Just before Madeline turned to grab her clutch off the bed, she caught the corner of her comforter fluttering in the mirror. Her window was open but there wasn’t a breeze. She turned slowly and a dark something peeked out from under her bed, invading the corner of her eye. Madeline jerked her head to look but the comforter was still and there was nothing there.

Madeline sighed again, yanked her clutch off the bed and started walking out of her room. Every step she made sounded like a cackle, like something was laughing at her. She stood still and her room was so filled with silence that her ears rang. She twitched her leg, faking a step and the cackle sounded again but it stopped short, as if it just realized it missed its cue. Madeline tapped her heel against the wood floor but that was all she heard. The floor creaked under her weight as she moved closer to the door. The clicks of her heels added to the noise and Madeline figured that had to have been what she was hearing. It didn’t sound so much like a cackle anymore.

She held onto the banister as she made her way down the stairs. The last thing she wanted to do was break her leg now but the shoes were working against her. When she emerged in the foyer, her foster mother squealed and clapped her hands together at the sight of a dressed-up Madeline. Madeline offered her a half smile while she tried to keep the blood from her cheeks.

“Still looks like a reject to me,” the foster brother intoned.

Foster Father smacked his son’s head and assured Madeline that she looked beautiful. Madeline just kept the awkward half smile on her face. She’d long lost her drive to bite back.

Foster Mother and Father quickly ushered her out the door as they were already running late. The warmth of the late summer night clung to her skin as she walked closer to the idling limousine. Foster Number Five was not as rich as they liked to pretend to be but they had to play the part for their friends. How shamed they would be to arrive at the gala in the family’s Camry.

Madeline’s hand touched the handle of the door when a hoot carried over to her on the wind. Just off behind her, on a branch mere feet away, sat a snow-white owl. Her owl. Another constant in her life for no matter where she went, that owl was sure to follow. It stared at her with an intensity that seemed to penetrate her soul. She wanted to reach out and run her fingers over its feathers but the driver stepped in her way and opened the door for her.

Madeline climbed into the car and made sure her dress was nowhere near the door when it closed. Even through the tint of the window and the darkness outside, she could see the branch bob where the owl no longer was. The chatter of her foster parents refocused Madeline’s attention and the limo started to pull away.


	2. A Dance

Everyone else looked like they were having fun. They were smiling and laughing and grouped together in private little conversations. Madeline was bored out of her mind. What would possess her foster parents to think that this would be a fun place for her? Maybe her foster mom thought it would be fun for Madeline to get all dressed up and go out. She’d never done it before. Yeah, it would have been fun if she wasn’t the youngest person by at least twenty years and had someone to talk to.

She grabbed a flute of champagne off of one of the passing trays. Her foster mom had given her permission to have just one glass. After one sip, Madeline placed it back down on another passing tray. No way could she have drunk all of that. Not with the way it tasted.

As she walked through the stuffy crowd, some of the older men gave her sidelong glances and the women whispered to each other, thinking Madeline couldn’t hear what they were saying. Really, she only heard half of it, but it was enough to not want to stick around to find out the rest.

Just beyond the great hall where the gala whined with its violins and constant chatter, there were two sets of stone stairs heading up on either side of the hall she was walking into. The further she walked away from the din, the louder her shoes echoed against the marble all around her. Every heartbeat told her she wasn’t supposed to be here but there was no one to stop her. No one came running after her. Madeline kept walking. She was used to it.

The stone was cold to the touch as she rested her fingers on the railing and placed her foot on the first stair. With every tap of her shoes, she climbed higher into the museum and the gala echoed more distantly. She reached the top of the stairs and turned down another hall, barely lit except for the few lights in the cases.

The gala became barely more than a hum as Madeline turned another corner and into a wide-open room littered with statues. Piles of rock indistinct in the shadows huddled together on platforms behind velvet rope. Madeline walked up to one of the plaques. It told her the stone was excavated from Crete and quite possibly from what was known as the Labyrinth of Minos.

Madeline smirked. “How ironic,” she whispered to herself but it felt like her voice reverberated around the room.

She’d been drawn to yet another labyrinth. At least hers wasn’t a vestibule for virginal sacrifice. She hoped. Her little red book was just one story in the supposedly long life of the Goblin King. Only what wasn’t said on the pages knew for sure.

Madeline walked further into the room, the clicks of her heels bouncing off the walls, threatening to give her secret away. A nameless tune floated into her head as she approached a glass case. If definitely wasn’t something she heard on the radio. In fact, she couldn’t place where she’d heard it at all. It was just there, tumbling over her lips in a tune she blindly knew.

A cool breeze pressed against the bare skin of her legs and back and Madeline shivered. Then she felt the heat of eyes boring into her, warming her. She felt an inclination to touch her pendant but kept her fingers on the edge of the glass case, next to the little placard that told her not to touch.

The warmth traveled from shoulder to shoulder, up her neck and settled on either side of her face. Was she caught? Why wasn’t the other person saying anything?

Another cool breeze brushed against Madeline’s skin and with it brought the scent of fruit, peaches, and power. Strength. It was endearing yet frightening.

Something flickered on the glass in front of her but when she looked, only her own wide-eyed expression gaped back. When the sound of tapping shoes filled her ears, her lips came together and her jaw tensed. The second person was undeniable now.

Slowly, Madeline turned her head to look over her shoulder and the shimmer that caught her eye blinded her for a second. But when her sight came back into focus, her jaw slackened and her lips parted in awe.

It was the man from her dreams. The Goblin King. But she couldn’t have been dreaming now. Did she fall and hit her head? Was she really unconscious? As if reading her mind, the Goblin King gave her a closed-mouth smile that dimpled both cheeks.

Madeline turned her body full around to face him and walked a couple of paces to the center of the room. Madeline knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to run to her king, throw herself into his arms and sob but fear rooted her to the spot. She couldn’t bear this man being an illusion and the thought of running right through him like mist churned her stomach. So she stood firm and watched as he walked, agonizingly slowly, towards her. He looked exactly like the man in her dreams. No deviations at all. He was both frightening and compelling and he looked dressed to attend one of his own galas. Hs midnight jacket picked up the small amount of light in the room and it shimmered like the stars. He was all at once magical and terrifying and Madeline didn’t know if she should run to him or away from him.

Without a word he stepped up to her and wrapped one gloved hand around her waist. Madeline rested her hand on his shoulder. She expected it to feel gritty with the shimmer but it was as smooth as silk. Her other hand became occupied as his gloved fingers wove between hers and he led them into a dance.

His eyes locked hers. She was afraid she was going to trip and make a fool of herself but his eyes told her no, she wasn’t. That same longing was there, as it was in her dreams. That same intensity drilled into her. Begged her. Madeline didn’t know how to answer it. Right then she had no voice at all.

They twirled around the hall to the same tune Madeline hummed before, except now it existed outside her head. It was all around them. Everything began to blur. There were no more artifacts, just pieces floating around them, lighting up their moment.

Madeline bent to every way his body moved so when he inched his hand further long her waist to bring her closer, her arm wrapped around his shoulder to help him move in. Their extended arms bent closer to their bodies. Madeline could feel the even beat of the Goblin King’s heart before she realized her hand was resting on his chest with his hand firmly held over hers.

They were barely moving now, only swaying like a couple of trees in a melodic wind. Madeline broke her gaze with the Goblin King and dipped her head to the side of his, pressing her cheek against the warmth of his. In turn he held her even closer.

Tears prickled at her eyes. She’d never been this happy, this relieved before. Her fingers padded at his shoulder and she could feel his hand slowly moving up her arm.

She felt his body move to speak before the words flowed over his lips.

“Say the words,” he whispered, his voice husky in the silence, “and you come home.”

His breath smelled of the peaches and power that carried to her on the breeze before and the heat of it rippled a shock down her spine.

She moved her face along his, her lips innocently brushing his cheek. The Goblin King’s eyes held hers again, so close that they wavered in and out of focus. His lips were so close she could swallow his breath. She wasn’t too young anymore. The guilt that lingered in her dreams had dissolved. Neither of them moved yet their faces got closer. She could just barely feel the soft of his lips when—

“Madeline!”

Her body jerked with the shock and her eyes darted over her king’s shoulder. It was her foster dad. She was caught in a very bad situation.

His arms lifted up in a defeated shrug. “You can’t be up here.”

Her foster father’s words wrenched her further from her fantasy but her arms were still wrapped around the afterimage of a body that was no longer there. The Goblin King was gone. The hall was in sharp focus and the artifacts were all firmly planted where they should be.

Madeline drew her arms around herself, pretending she was cold to hide the embrace she had on the long gone king. Her silence made her foster father more agitated.

“Well?”

He was right in front of her now, pushing around the lingering scent of sweet fruit and fear.

“I’m-I’m sorry. I just . . . was in a daze, I guess.”

Madeline’s hands dropped, her fingers linked with one another in front of her. The loss made her heart feel like lead.

Her foster father rolled his eyes. “We’re leaving now. Trish and I have been looking for you. Let’s go.”

He made a move to grab her by the arm but jerked his hand back. No. Foster Number Five never touched her in any way. They never afforded her any kind of simple, humanly gesture. He just started to walk away.

Madeline held back a few paces behind him. She was sure to get a lecture in the car about how ungrateful or irresponsible she was for wandering off like a child. She just wanted to delay it as long as she could.

“Uh, Jack, do you mind . . . ?”

Madeline let the unfinished question hang in the air as she pointed to the bathroom they’d just about passed. Jack just waved her off and continued walking with barely a glance.

She scurried through the door and locked it, not wanting to be bothered at all. She walked in front of the mirror and held her wrist up to her mouth. She closed her eyes tight, fighting back the tears trying to pinch though. Her body started to wrack with sobs and she leaned over the sink for support. Madeline held her fingers to her lips, trying desperately to gain some control of herself.

The Goblin King had been there. She hadn’t been asleep. No one shook her awake. She could still feel his hand pressed into her back. She could still taste his breath. He was real. And she just needed to say the words and she’d go home.

His home? Her home? Were they the same? Had she made his home hers in her dreams? It was so confusing. What words did she have to say? He told her as if she knew.

Someone pounded at the door but Madeline couldn’t be bothered to hear what they had to say. The mirror, the presence swirling behind her, unformed but more powerful than it looked, held her attention far more than any aging harpy needing to get in could.


	3. Cast Away

“Good luck,” Trish said from the driver’s seat. She was still buckled in and her hands gripped the wheel as if she were afraid it was going to run away from her.

Jack was at work and Madeline’s foster brother would have rather pelted her with raw meat than see her off.

“Thank you,” Madeline said as she juggled the box in her arms.

Her whole world was stuffed into the suitcase at her feet and the box in her hands. She never bothered to accumulate much. It would just have been more hassle for her to move around with.

The car window closed and Trish drove away, the last foster to ever say goodbye. At least she’d said it. It was more than what Madeline ever got from the rest.

She turned her back on the street and looked up at the dingy building in front of her. Despite the crystal blue sky, the building looked imposing, sad. The lone mangy dog in a pack of purebreds. That’s how Madeline felt: alone and outcast.

With her box tucked under one arm and her suitcase rolling behind her, Madeline wedged the key in the door to let herself in. The stairs to her left yelled at her to walk up them. It was only four flights, after all. But her luggage pushed her towards the rickety-looking elevator in front of her. She pressed the button to call it down and it clamored and banged towards her as if it were hitting each floor on the way.

The gates creaked when she opened and shut them and the ride up was just as thumping as it sounded. Madeline begged the cables to hold as the lift lurched to a stop and she scurried out, tipping her luggage over in the process.

She didn’t bother righting it back onto its wheels and instead dragged it down the hall a few feet to her door. The doorknob required a jiggle before it let her in but Madeline would have been perfectly content sleeping in the hallway for what she walked into.

There was only one large window in the room and it faced an adjacent brick wall. Madeline clicked on an overhead light and the dusted-over light bulb cast everything in a sick yellow glow. The studio came furnished. That meant a futon, an old thirteen-inch TV and lawn furniture for a dining room set.

She placed the box on the glass table and walked to the bathroom. The toilet and the bathtub were scraping up against each other and the sink would be in her lap. Great. She walked out of the tiny bathroom and slid open the doors of the lone closet. It wasn’t any bigger. Something squeaked at her foot and Madeline slammed the doors shut. Even greater.

Her feet dragged as she trudged over to the futon and plopped down. The toughness of the cushion nearly knocked the wind out of her. Her butt stung a little with the impact.

“So this is life now,” she said to the empty room.

An overwhelming sense of despair filled her up like a torrent. Sure, there was no one to order her around or punish her. There never really was anyone that cared where she went or what she did. But for the first time, the place she called home actually reflected her loneliness. She didn’t have pictures of anyone to hang on the walls. There wouldn’t be anyone to stop by to wish her a good house warming. There was nothing about this “house” that was warming.

Madeline dipped her head back and let it rest against the top of the futon. Right now, the hardness didn’t bother her. She closed her eyes tightly and didn’t care to try and stop the few drops that ran down her cheeks.

Through her tear-stuffed nose came a familiar smell, a smell that popped open Madeline’s eyes and jolted her upright. Peaches. There weren’t any halls to run down to search. A simple scan of the room told her that she was still alone. She must want her Goblin King back so badly she imagined the smell.

It’d only been three nights since the gala but the Goblin King’s touch was still warm on her skin. He did not invade her dreams those nights like he so often did but the king was her waking thought every morning. Even now, as she inhaled the lingering scent of peach, Madeline couldn’t convince herself that he was completely real. Or wholly imagined for that matter. He existed somewhere in between, just tangible enough to touch but mist enough to escape in a blink.

“Happy birthday to me,” Madeline mumbled as she pulled herself up from the futon and stumbled over to her box.

On top sat her little red book. Her fingers groped for it longingly and it nearly jumped into her hand. Her pendant, sat snuggly in the nook of her throat, flashed ice cold and then seared white-hot. Madeline yelped but the pain was gone before she could do anything about it.

She quickly walked into the bathroom and gazed into the mirror, checking her skin for damage. Under the pendant, in its perfect impressioned shape, was a bright red burn in that distinct boomerang curve. That she definitely didn’t imagine.

As she walked back out into the only room, her king’s words sprang into her mind. They echoed all around her.

Say the words and you come home.

Madeline looked down at the little red book in her hand and it felt like it stared right back at her.

“What words?” Madeline cried in frustration.

She had to know them. They had to be so simple, staring her in the face. She rubbed her fingers over her forehead as her free hand flipped through the book. She didn’t even need the book to recite the story word for word. So which ones were they?

“I wish someone would just tell me what they are!”

The impatience in her voice was evident as she tossed the book onto the futon and plopped down next to it, forgetting how hard the cushion was. They both bounced together.

“Urg.” Madeline’s breath sucked in as she tried to keep it from running away from her.

Something scuttled behind the rickety closet doors and Madeline couldn’t help but sneer. More mice. Maybe she could make them into pets. Oh how gross.

The next scuttle came from under her butt, out of sight under the futon. Madeline lifted up her feet and crossed them underneath her. Great. Something more to spend money on. Traps.

She rolled her head in the direction of the book and found it settled open to a page early on in the story. She picked it up and started scanning. When her eyes hit that one line, she felt like she’d been slapped. It was so painfully obvious that it might as well been the only sentence on the page.

Madeline’s heart fluttered, then stuttered to a stop. But this wasn’t real. That line wasn’t going to make anything more happen than saying Bloody Mary in the bathroom mirror. Actually, she’d probably get a bigger result doing that.

It’s not like saying that line would hurt any though. Madeline looked down at what she was wearing, just in case. Jeans, plain shoes and a shirt that hinted at the curves of her body but didn’t give too much away. Decent enough. Not that it mattered. Nothing was going to happen anyway.

Madeline closed the book and set it down at her side. Should she sit or stand? Sit. Does she just say it or was there something else involved? In the story the girl said it, walked out of the room and her brother was gone. But Madeline couldn’t walk out of her room. For one, there was only the one, and for another, she was wishing herself away. If anything happened, she wouldn’t have time to do anything. But it’s not like anything was going to happen.

It took her a minute for Madeline to gather her nerves, even though it was just her in the room. The soft scent of peach licked at her nose again and the words surged inside of her, begging to get out.

“I . . . I wish . . . I wish the goblins would come and take me away.”

Just two more words. Why was her heart beating so fast? It’s not like anything was going to happen. Her fingers were locked together pretty tightly and her palms were just a little sweaty. But there was nothing to be nervous about. Nothing was going to happen. The fantasy was in her head and in her book. It wasn’t real.

“Right . . . now.”

Her voice barely whispered that final word. She meant to scan the room for any magical changes but when Madeline blinked, she opened her eyes to blackness.


	4. Nobility

Another aging water jug smashed into the wall behind the Goblin King’s throne but it failed to even elicit a flinch. A piece of ceramic landed on his arm and, as if he were picking up a mouse by its tail, removed the shard from his clothing and brushed off the remnants.

The goblin hollering somewhere in the throne room was drowned out by the raging noblewoman who was scanning the room for another piece of pottery to hurl.

“Our daughter!” The woman’s voice didn’t even hint at hoarse, but remained firm and loud. “You’re putting our daughter through that little maze of yours like she’s a common brat!”

Jareth’s head rested lazily on his fist as his legs draped over the side of the throne. His eyes looked sleepily at the enraged woman in front of him before they rolled over to her much more placid husband leaning in the doorway.

“If you can’t control her, I’ll be force to drop her into an oubliette.”

The woman’s scoff was silent and her posture straightened to accommodate her hands on her hips.

“How dare you!” Jareth issued a little mocking laugh that could have easily been a small cough. “This,” the woman pointed out the large stone window and to the expansive Labyrinth beyond, “is how you treat your future queen? Like some spoiled little tart wishing away a sibling? Hasn’t she been through enough? I demand you transport her to the castle immediately and treat her like the royalty she is!”

She stood at her full height and the high collar wrapping around her head made her all the more imposing. She was determined to make sure that no one pushed her around, including her husband standing in the doorway who had learned eons ago that it was better to let her rant and rave than attempt to calm her down. He still limped when it rained because of her and his attempted intervention.

Jareth was tired of the screeching and screaming of this woman in his home, questioning his motives. Sure, they were the rulers of Fey, all that his domain failed to touch, but right now they were in the kingdom of the Goblin King and he was done taking this berating.

The noblewoman held her place as the Goblin King heaved himself from his throne and barreled at her, his steel eyes piercing her to the very floor.

“Royalty?” Jareth produced a crystal at his fingertips and held it up between their faces. “Does she look like royalty? Does she act it?”

The woman resigned to look in the crystal at her nose and the confused face of her daughter crimped her heart.

“You’ve thrown her from one world to another. What do you expect her to look like?” the woman growled, her teeth clenched.

Jareth sneered and in one swift motion threw the crystal at the wall. It didn’t shatter as crystal would but burst into a thousand little bubbles that popped themselves away.

“You, Stala. You of all people know being queen far exceeds looking the part. I’ve watched her since you sent her away. She is a scared little girl that curls into herself to hide from the horribleness around her. Is that a queen to you?”

Stala tried to hide her shaking but her quivering lip gave her away.

“Hasn’t she been through enough?” Her question was barely audible.

Jareth pulled himself up to his full height and peered down his nose at the noblewoman in front of him.

“She can’t face the Dissenters in the state she’s in. What a pity to have her destroyed now when you’ve tried to protect her all these years.”

“Now that’s enough,” the quiet nobleman interjected, faltering the smirk on Jareth’s face. He moved to be at his wife’s side and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “We did what we thought was best for Maiae—”

“Then you’re obligated to keep doing so, aren’t you?” Jareth interrupted. “The Labyrinth will bring the fight back out of her. It’ll give her the strength required of a queen.”

“Or she’ll lose herself even more.” There were tears on the noblewoman’s voice but she kept them out of her eyes.

“Then she was never meant to be queen.”

Jareth turned his back on the couple and settled himself back into his throne.

“Neither of us can win the war alone, Jareth. You’re well aware of that,” the nobleman reminded him.

Jareth hoped he kept his falter hidden but he knew all too well that the Dissenters could only be beaten by the two kingdoms. Their destruction was inevitable without the union. He’d ruled too long to lose everything.

He looked from the face of the noblewoman, her presence as light as the sun, to her husband, who shone just as brightly despite his somber expression.

“Then we had all better hope that she doesn’t fail my test then, hadn’t we? She’s just as dead as a weak queen as she is a lost child. Now, I think you’d better write that letter before she enters the Labyrinth. She needs some sight now because walking into my test blind is all the more detrimental.”

“And what will you do?” the noblewoman asked as she took the parchment and quill proffered by the goblin at her feet.

Jareth smirked and tapped his boot with his cane. “What I always do.”


	5. The Quest

Madeline’s lungs filled with air and she hacked on the dust she inhaled. A moan rumbled in her chest as she shifted herself on the futon. Was it possible that it’d gotten harder? She lowered her hands to her sides to press herself up and started at the grit between her fingers. The pads of her fingers traced lines in the dirt, reaching far out to her side, too far for it to be the futon. And too dirty.

Her eyes popped open and a dark sky just on the rising side of morning twilight stared back at her. Her torso sprung up like a Jack in the Box but her eyes could barely see what stretched out in front of her. Madeline’s eyes gazed around where she sat and saw the dry sandy dirt that her fingers were playing in. The wind whipped at the swirls she’d drawn.

With her eyes transfixed on the brightening horizon, Madeline pulled herself up and brushed the dust from her clothes. The wind swept any remaining dirt from her hair. She turned to look behind her but it was still too dark to see much of anything although it looked like nothing was there. When she turned back around, it was clear she was on some sort of hill overlooking something vast. The rays of the sun ran ahead of the orb and they cast something jutting in the distance into a silhouette. From its turrets and spires and immense size even at that distance, it was obvious it was a castle. She could even make out the clutter of something surrounding it, far below the castle’s windows. A village, or a city . . .

“This isn’t really happening,” Madeline said to the fading darkness, or maybe to will the darkness away faster.

While she couldn’t see what lay at the bottom of the hill, she could guess but it wouldn’t be right, because it was all just a book.

“I’ve officially snapped from reality.”

The wind blew sharply at her words and goosebumps prickled at Madeline’s skin. She did not just wish herself away to the Goblin King’s Labyrinth. Impossible. Okay, so he felt really real at the gala but the brain’s a really powerful thing. People hallucinate things all the time and they think they’re completely real. Of course. That’s what all this was. She probably just knocked herself out on the rock-hard futon. That was so much more possible than standing in a fantasy kingdom watching the sun rise.

Right then, Madeline could rationalize all she wanted to but as the sunlight peeked over the horizon to reveal more and more twisting hedgerows and turning stone alleyways, it was getting harder and harder to believe her own brain babbling.

Another gust of wind pushed its way up the hill and something crinkled at her leg. When she looked down, a yellowed envelope fluttered against her jeans. Madeline reached for it and the paper felt brittle under her fingers. Holding the flap down was an emerald wax seal. It was hard to make out the insignia in the pre-dawn light but if Madeline squinted just so, it looked like a horn crossed with a sword and something with wings floating above it. She flipped it over and, on the front, written in shimmering ink that appeared to light up the darkness around her, was a name. The elegance of the script made it hard to read but Madeline tried.

“Mai . . .” She turned the envelope a little to the side. Maybe it would get clearer that way. “Mai . . .”

“Maiae.”

Madeline whipped around so fast that she was struck dizzy. She hadn’t heard anyone approach and she didn’t think she was in that much of a daze. But when her eyes refocused out of their spinning, there didn’t seem to be anyone there. In the darkness, at the top of the hill, there might have been someone but it was only a dark, indistinct shape. Still, it spoke.

“Maiae. It’s your name.” When Madeline didn’t speak, the voice said the same again, as if to a child just learning to read. “Mai-Ya.”

“Who’s there?”

Madeline squinted into the darkness while the vaguely familiar voice swam around her head. Someone was out there.

The shape began to move, the black figure against the dark sky started to step towards her. Madeline no longer had to squint her eyes but just allow the figure to walk into the light. She could feel the moisture on her fingertips start to seep into the letter as she took a step back.

Boots came into the light first, followed by legginged legs with a cape fluttering around them, gloved hands, a well-dressed, glittering torso, a face that made her heart freeze and hair that she could still feel on her face from the other night.

Madeline took another tentative step back as her breath caught in her throat. Her heart beat so erratically she thought she was going to faint. It was her king, once again so close to her but this time he didn’t look inviting. He looked menacing, taunting. He stopped feet from her and Madeline couldn’t help but gape at him. A shiver echoed over her body but she couldn’t tell if she was cold or afraid.

Her head began to shake, as if she were no-ing away all her eyes saw. “This . . . this can’t be real.” Her voice shook like her head and she was afraid it’d gotten lost on the wind. The second the Goblin King smirked, however, she knew her words were found.

“This is very real, dear Maiae.”

He stepped forward and reached his hand out to brush Madeline’s arm. She tried to hide her erratic breathing and kept her eyes focused on his face, although he was watching his own hand. His fingers slid down her arm and charged electricity with each sweep. It was a second before Madeline felt the sharp pinch on her arm and jerked it away from his hand.

“Ah!” She fiercely rubbed at the pain he just caused and frowned up at him. He towered over her from his position on the hill.

“This is as real as that pain.” His smile oozed intimidation.

Was this really her king? He was so kind and gentle in her dreams. At the gala, he nearly opened his arms to her. Here, he was a cat playing with a mouse and this mouse didn’t like the look of the cat’s eyes.

“You wanted to come home, Maiae. So I brought you. I’d think you’d be thankful.” He rested his hands on his hips and peered down at Madeline.

“Why do you call me that? That’s not my name and this isn’t my home!”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “You sound so sure. Is that why you’ve called my Labyrinth home for all these years? You run away to my kingdom because you felt safe here. Aren’t you safe at home?” He started walking closer to her.

Madeline’s head shook more fervently. “I’m . . . I’m just dreaming. This isn’t—”

“This is what you wished for since you first woke up in that orphanage.”

The heat of the Goblin King’s voice in her ear made Madeline jump. His cloak wrapped around her as he paced.

“That’s why you grasp to that necklace like it’s your last beacon of hope.”

“How do you—” Madeline could hardly get the words out.

“I know everything.” His voice rasped in a feral way that would have otherwise been seductive had Madeline’s head not been spinning.

“My name—”

“Is Maiae. You can no longer retreat into the protection of a fairy tale. You must face it head on.”

Madeline brushed her hand over her face. This was unreal. Yet it was as real as the Goblin King’s cape twirling through her legs. It was as real as his presence was threatening. She looked back out towards the castle and the sun had shown itself enough to illuminate the Labyrinth before her in all its daunting glory. It was more gut wrenching than her mind could ever imagine.

The cool touch of leather prickled the skin on her throat and when she looked, the Goblin King was admiring her pendant. Her eyes immediately found the one dangling at his chest and it nearly hypnotized her. That same touch wrapped around her wrist as the Goblin King lifted her arm and rested her fingers on his pendant. It was as cold as ice and shimmered like crystal. The weight of it was exactly as she remembered it from her dreams.

But just as Madeline thought that particular king was returning, the snide, taunting one made headway again.

“You’re not home until you reach my castle.” Madeline looked out at the dot hovering over the Labyrinth and she could feel a knot in her throat start to tie up. “And you have thirteen hours to do it.”

He pointed off to his side where a grand crystal clock shimmered in the dawn. Its hands were set straight at thirteen and the second hand had already started to twitch.

Madeline’s face sank into a state of bewildered.

“You’re-you’re making me go through that?”

His laugh was condescending. “You thought that you could just skip it? That you were special?”

Her heart twisted and she could feel her teeth grinding together.

He nodded towards the envelope in her hand. “I recommend you read that quickly and move on. Dwelling on it won’t help you through my Labyrinth.”

Madeline was struck dumb. This was partly her own fault. Her stupid dreams had set her expectations too high. He was the Goblin King, for Christ’s sake. He snatched babies and turned them into goblins. What the hell did she expect? But did he have to be such an ass to her? How could she feel so . . . betrayed by a dream?

She tried to make the sarcasm drip from her words but she was afraid that it sounded more like fear.

“And if I fail?”

The corner of his mouth crooked up. “There are things far worse than being turned into a goblin.”

Madeline held his gaze for a moment longer before she looked down at the envelope in her hand. When she looked back up, the Goblin King was gone. She was able to see all around her now but there was no trace of him no matter where she looked. Just the massive Labyrinth below her. She gave her arm another quick pinch just for good measure. Sure enough, just like the king’s, it hurt like hell.

She ground her teeth harder as she tore into the envelope, forgetting to get a better look at the seal before she popped it open. When she unfolded the letter, it held the same name that the Goblin King spoke – Maiae. It wasn’t her name.

Dearest Maiae,

Please know that our intentions were never anything short of pure. When we sent you away, we did it thinking we were saving you from the Dissenters and ensuring our future survival. Now we’re not sure if we’ve done you a disservice by not keeping you in this world and exposing you to the tortures of your former one.

We love you with every ounce of our beings and it’s with that love that we urge you to find the strength to complete the Labyrinth, not only for your own survival, but ours and our home. Beat Jareth, for he needs it, especially by your hand. That will be the only proof to show.

We, too, will be waiting at the castle. Make us proud and remember what’s at risk if you fail.

Our Love,

Mother and Father

Madeline wanted to kick something.

“What the hell is this? Is this some sick joke? A world dies if I fail? WHY DON’T YOU ADD A LITTLE MORE PRESSURE?” Madeline screamed over the Labyrinth. Instead of echoing, it seemed to absorb her voice, stopping it’s sound dead.

She looked back down at the letter.

“My parents? They’re part of this? I’m from this world? Oh yeah, don’t dwell. Okay. Anything else you want to dump on me before I jump into the pit? I don’t know what could possibly top this but in the Labyrinth, anything goes!”

Madeline waved her hands around her in frustration. She wanted desperately to flop down on the ground and just rip her hair out. Or cry. Or both. But she caught herself mid-movement and pulled herself back up. The clock was ticking. Literally. If nothing else, the drive for answers will propel her right to the castle.

She folded up the supposed letter from her parents and tucked it into her back pocket and headed down the hill. It was steep and she stumbled a few steps but she kept moving, her eyes trained on the perimeter wall.

First thing was first – finding a way in. Because there was definitely no door in sight.


	6. First Impression

Nothing but wall in either direction. Madeline turned and looked back up at the hill she just stumbled down. Maybe she should go back up and see if she could see anything that would get her into the Labyrinth. From where she stood, there was nothing but rock in her face. And that rock kept on going and disappeared over the horizon.

She craned her head up and squinted into the bright blue sky. The top of the wall was easily another five feet over her head, if not more. Madeline looked from side to side and the trees stayed far away from the barrier to the Labyrinth, as if it were poisonous. Considering the dust that swirled in the breeze and the tumbleweeds that kicked up with it, she wouldn’t doubt it.

After a quick decision, she opted to try left and see if she’d have any luck with anything. But nothing even remotely living was anywhere around, except for the spot of black circling overhead. She pressed her hands to the stone wall and gave it a push. Why not? Since everything in her book was proving to be true, why not use it? Nothing was as it seemed in the Labyrinth, that much she knew. Except she was still outside the Labyrinth. But the wall was part of it. Who knew? Obviously not her.

Madeline rested her head on her hands against the wall and closed her eyes to gather her bearings. She could feel herself getting worked up and everything started to turn in on itself. She just wanted to sit for a minute.

No!

It was too soon to be getting so frustrated. It was too soon for breaks. Madeline pushed herself up from the wall and continued walking in the direction she was going. Turning around meant doubling back over space she’d already covered. That was wasting time and there wasn’t enough of it to waste.

Behind her she heard a loud flap, like a sheet getting twisted in a bubble of wind, followed by light pecking at the ground. Madeline turned around slowly. She highly doubted it was anything as simple, or as small, as a seagull.

The closest thing she could compare it to was a vulture but even that was a stretch. The only place it had feathers was on its enormous wings. The rest of its body looked like burnt, wrinkled leather. She half-expected it to squeak as it tottered closer to her. Its face looked more goblin than bird. Its eyes were almost as dark as the flaps of skin around them. Its leather face was aged heavier than its body and its beak. While the bird looked intimidating, its beak looked downright malicious. Long and pointed and crackled with age. Or wear.

Madeline shook the thought from her head and slowly stepped backwards, away from the giant bird. It still tried to close the gap and the closer it got, the bigger Madeline realized it was. Its head was easily at her chest.

It opened its mouth and cawed. The noise ripped through Madeline’s ears and she instinctively covered them with her hands. She’d never heard a bird make such a noise. Then it started to choke and hack. Madeline lowered her hands and listened to the sick noise spilling out of the bird’s throat before she started to reach her hand out to it. She had no idea what she’d do. Pat its back maybe?

Before Madeline’s fingers could reach the gnarled skin on the back of the bird, it gave one final hack and something shot straight out of its mouth and rocketed towards her feet. She jumped as if it were a bullet and jolted out of its way. A small pile of slimy bones was oozing into a puddle where she had been standing.

Madeline’s face scrunched in disgust. “Oh gross.” When the bile smell hit her nose, she backed away further.

“Should I’ve choked to save your nose then?”

Madeline looked up, the disgust still lingering on her scrunched nose, and saw the bird raising a gnarled eyebrow at her. It flapped its wings impatiently.

“Well . . . did you have to shoot it at my feet?”

The vulture gave another caw and Madeline jumped. “Next time I mind yer shoes. Never mind me breathing. Don’t need that, do we?”

Normally Madeline would have thought it a little more than odd to be having a conversation with a giant bird. And normally the Labyrinth was just a fantasy.

“I’m-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” She sighed heavily and the bird started to grow agitated. “You-you fly all over the Labyrinth, right?”

The vulture cawed. Madeline’s jumps were getting smaller. She took that as a yes although it could have meant anything.

“Can-can you tell me where the gate into the Labyrinth is?”

Caw. “The gate?” Madeline nodded. It cawed again but this time it almost sounded like laughter. “Other side. You gots days to walk to get there.”

Madeline’s heart sank into her stomach. Jareth started her on the complete opposite side of the Labyrinth. How in the world was she going to even have a chance to get through it if it was impossible to even get in it? Her shoulders dropped and any inkling of hope slid from her face. She looked back up at the vulture and it was crouched low, eying her.

“Can you help me get in?” Madeline asked it resignedly.

Caw. “You gots food?” Madeline lifted her empty hands to it. Caw. It shook its head and spread its wings wide, readying itself to take off. “Use them eyes. That’s why you gots them,” it said before it wobbled into the air and soared unsteadily on the light breeze.

Whenever Madeline had trouble getting an answer, she’d curl herself up on something comfy and just think. It would eventually come to her. That, however, required the luxury of time. She needed an answer and she needed it now.

Madeline moped along the wall for a few feet before up ahead and over her head caught her eye. Some roots were clustered and jutting out of the rock. She walked directly underneath them, stood on her tippy toes and reached her arm up. Her fingertips just barely brushed the bark. If they held, and they were fat enough for Madeline to use them as leverage, it was quite possible that she could hoist herself over the top of the wall.

She bent down into a squat and jumped up. She was able to get a grip on the roots and they allowed her to dangle up against the barricade wall. They were strong enough for that, at least.

Madeline let go and fell the short distance to the ground. She could run at the wall, run a couple steps up it, grab onto the roots, pull herself up and hoist herself over the top of the wall. The corners of her mouth ticked up in a small smile. Right then she was proud of her problem-solving skills. Never mind that she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all going to be easier said than done.

She stepped a few yards beyond the start of the incline back up the hill. She was going to need some decent speed for this. Madeline took two steps before breaking into a sprint. The wall rushed at her quickly and before she knew it, she bounded off the ground and readied herself for her amble up the wall.

Except her foot didn’t stop at the wall. It went through it. Damn Newton and his forward momentum. It still applied in this world since Madeline couldn’t keep the rest of her body from following suit. She was plunged into dark and cool when she sailed through the stone and it was only a split second before it was light again and a nanosecond when she realized she was headed right for the corner of another wall.

Her body hit the second wall with a thud and then crumpled onto the ground. The pain radiated everywhere she hit the wall. It hurt to breathe. She remained on her back and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Her breathing was deep and every other breath a sob hiccupped in her chest. Tears pooled at the corners of her eyes and she could feel a few slide down the side of her face.

Slowly she opened her eyes and a blue sky greeted her. The only part of her that wasn’t throbbing was her head, luckily. It was an arduous process, sitting up, but she breathed through the pain. From where she sat, she looked up at the corner wall that she’d knocked into and it glared back down at her. It was just as tall as the perimeter wall but a look around told Madeline that she was no longer on the outside.

Stone walls sat at odd angles all around her, creating alleys that headed every which way. Behind her was the barrier wall. Madeline inched away from it, afraid that if she got too close it’d suck her back out.

She used the wall that railroaded her as a crutch to pull herself to her feet.

“One obstacle down,” Madeline said as she groaned with the pain of standing up. “Who knows how many more to go.”

She leaned up against the wall to rest as her eyes hopped from path to path, attempting to help her decide which way to go.

“The outside wall’s there,” she pointed as she reasoned, “so the castle has to be that way.” She pointed straight ahead, directly into another wall.

“Just-just head towards the castle,” she told herself as she pushed herself up from her lean-to and headed down a path that was going in the best direction she could figure.

“I just need to keep sight . . . of the castle.”

Madeline’s pain winded her and she ambled with a slight limp but she kept moving. Hopefully she could walk it off.

**xXx**

Madeline’s pained face reflected in a crystal sitting atop Jareth’s finger. Stala hovered over his shoulder, desperate for a glimpse of her daughter while her husband kept watch out the large open window.

Jareth laughed a satisfied laugh as he tossed the crystal away, not caring to ask Stala if she was finished.

“What could you possibly be laughing at? She’s hurt!” Stala’s voice wavered but Jareth’s smile remained firmly on his face as he lifted himself up.

“She got up,” he said, his smile stretching wider, before he walked out of the throne room.

“Dorian,” Stala called to her husband but he didn’t turn around.

“I trust our daughter, Stala. She has your blood. She will keep getting up.”

Stala desperately wanted to believe her husband’s words but somewhere, deep in her soul, she knew that if the Labyrinth got bad enough, Maiae would, indeed, stay down.


	7. Almost Human

_Just keep the castle in sight_ , Madeline kept telling herself but even she was doubting her own words now.

It felt like she’d been walking for hours with the turns after turns after turns she was making. Every time she thought she’d gotten a little bit farther along, it looked like she’d doubled back again. Not that she could really tell. There were giant fingers pointing in every which direction everywhere and it’s not like the stone walls looked any different no matter which turn she made. Still, every time she caught a glimpse of the castle, it didn’t look like it’d gotten any closer.

Madeline leaned back against one of the walls and rubbed at the front of her shoulder. Her limp was gone; either that or she just didn’t care about the pain anymore, but her shoulder still hurt. It was where she hit the wall the hardest. Every once in a while she peeked under her shirt and the bruise that was forming got bigger with every look.

A scuffling noise brought Madeline out of her pain daze and she looked around. There was nothing at either end of the alley she was standing in. Then she heard it again. Madeline walked slowly towards the sound. It was getting neither louder not quieter the closer she got and when she ducked her head around a corner, there was still nothing.

She stood herself upright and stared down each of the five alleyways surrounding her. The scuffling was still there. She just couldn’t pinpoint where there was. It sounded like it was coming from all around her.

Her feet started carrying her down one way, the way that pointed closest to the castle, and Madeline didn’t stop herself. The end of that corridor came up quicker than she thought her feet were moving. When she turned the next corner, she stumbled backwards and braced herself against the ever-supportive stone.

Leaning against the wall, mere feet from her, was a person. Or what looked like a person. It looked neither male nor female, its features were completely androgynous, its head bald and its eyes as piercing, glowing blue as the ocean water. It was wearing rags, what looked like a diaper tied around its waist and some kind of shirt fashioned out of the same material. And it was barefoot.

It regarded Madeline with a closed-mouth smile that churned her stomach. It was conniving and her gut rolled with the feeling that she needed to leave. Immediately.

When it stood up straight, Madeline could see all the blue etches of veins creep and twist under its near-translucent skin. She felt the retch creeping up her throat but quickly swallowed it down. She knew, somewhere, that offending this thing was not a good idea.

It looked at her with a tilt of its head and took a step closer. Madeline heard that scuffling noise again – a mix of the sack-like clothing and bare, shuffling feet. She wanted to back away and run but she might as well been backed into a corner. Not knowing if her next turn would have her up against a dead end was not a good thing when trying to run away.

It started walking closer and somewhere, buried deep in her fear, a voice was telling her to stand her ground, stay strong. Madeline’s common sense, however, was much louder and capable of pushing the fear out of its way. It was screaming at her to run. Now.

“You’re you,” it said.

There was something not right about its teeth. Madeline got a peek of that through its lips as it spoke. It wasn’t good enough to tell, though.

She kept one hand on the wall, holding it for support, as she spoke.

“Who else would I be?”

When it smiled wide, its teeth fanned out in its mouth like a set of knives. They were all jagged and pointed and looked about ready to tear into anything that they could clamp down on. Madeline’s breath came out just as jagged and it was far too late to hide her fear. It smelled it on her before she even saw it, before it ever smiled.

“You will help us,” it said as it raised a limp-wristed hand to her.

The movement was delicate, unlike everything else about the creature. Its long spindly fingers reached out to her as if to pet her but Madeline recoiled before they had a chance to touch her. The thing sneered and lowered its hand as slowly as it raised it.

“We are your subjects. It is your duty.”

The frown on its face made it look confused. Madeline took another step back.

“What are you talking about?”

It sneered again and something inside it started to growl. Madeline’s fingers wrapped around the corner of the wall.

“You have no choice.” Its voice was raspy, capable of sanding wood.

Madeline’s eyes were glued to the creature’s changing features. The snarl lines around its nose and mouth hardened. Its eyes tilted into an immovable frown and its mouth . . . its jaw unhinged revealing more rows of jagged, dangerous teeth than Madeline thought could ever fit in a mouth. The roar that rumbled up and out of it’s throat didn’t sound like it could come from such a small creature, but it sent vibrations rattling through the stone.

The scream running out of Madeline’s mouth ripped her throat raw and she dashed around the wall. She ran blindly, taking whatever turn her feet thought to take. There was no rhyme or reason to her method. There was no castle in sight. There was just run.

She turned another corner and something lashed out at her, catching her neck. The thing was nearly on top of her, ready to make another swipe. She could feel the sting in her skin but just barely as she pivoted and ran back the other way, down another alley and straight into a set of spears.

Madeline reeled backwards just before one of the sharp-looking tips made its home in her stomach. It took a second for her to process before she realized they were goblins. Armed goblins riding . . . something. The two-legged steeds looked part goblin, part ostrich and the goblin warriors riding them were holding their hair as reins. She couldn’t see the goblins’ faces. They were hidden under their well-worn helmets, but their spears, with something that looked like a lot of dried blood on the tips, were still pointed at her.

As she backed slowly away, the soldiers remained where they stood, blocking the way out of the alley. The roar of the creature behind Madeline made her jump and she pressed her back to the wall so she could see to both sides of her. The creature had turned in and was closing in on her.

It was so focused on her that it was a few feet into the alley before it noticed the goblin soldiers and their spears. If it had haunches, it would have hackled them. The hiss it made was more powerful than any hiss she’d ever heard and Madeline had nowhere to go. Especially after four more goblin guards trotted in on their steeds to block off the other end of the alley.

“Hey! HEY!”

Madeline heard the call but when she looked from left to right, she saw nothing but a rabid creature and stoic guards. The thing no longer regarded her but bared its teeth back and forth between the two sets of soldiers. The goblins still hadn’t moved.

Out of the corner of her eye, something was moving, hopping up and down. When she looked, a goblin, obviously shorter than the guards, was jumping and trying to get her attention. Its arms waved spastically as its head hopped over the other goblins.

“C’mon!”

Was it trying to help her? This wasn’t exactly a stealthy escape.

“C’mon an’ move already, won’t you?”

The creature was rooted to the spot. It had even started to quiver, too afraid to move. But it still kept its nasty face on. The goblin soldiers weren’t moving, not to the creature, to her, or the goblin yelling to her. Was it possible that the goblins were there to help her? Was this thing not supposed to be part of Jareth’s Labyrinth?

Madeline inched along the wall towards the spastic goblin that was still waving her over. When she finally had its face in sight, she frowned at it but it kept waving her forward.

“C’mon! They ain’ts moving till we’re gone so let’s get!”

Madeline’s eyes hopped from goblin soldier to goblin soldier as she moved closer. They didn’t acknowledge her. Their faces, well, their helmets, anyway, were trained on the thing pinned in between them. She eased around the point of one of the spears and started to scoot between two of them. They even shifted away slightly to let her by. She looked back when she was clear of them and they’d moved back to their fighting positions.

“We’s gots to go!”

The goblin, or dwarf since he was a little bigger than the others, and a he by the sound of his voice, came only thigh high but he could move with his short legs. His puffy shirt billowed in the breeze as he zipped along, Madeline easily keeping up. Behind her, the creature roared again and the clang of metal drowned it out. She didn’t want to know what was happening to any of them.

“Watch it!” the dwarf yelled as Madeline nearly tripped over him.

She didn’t know he’d stopped but they were standing in front of yet another stone wall, a dead end. The clanging of the weapons and the roar of the creature was too close for comfort. She couldn’t see any of the fighting but hearing it was bad enough. Madeline turned back to the dwarf but before she could ask him anything, stone was scraping on stone to reveal a door in the wall.

“This way. C’mon.”

The dwarf scurried through the opening without even hesitating but Madeline had an uneasy feeling in her stomach. Could she really trust this guy? He did rescue her, after all, but where was he taking her? She didn’t like being led blindly although that’s what her time in the Labyrinth had been – one blind walkway after another.

She looked up before she walked through the door and saw Jareth’s castle hovering over the walls in the distance. Maybe it was her eyes but it looked slightly bigger. She turned back to the opening, pitch black with the dwarf nowhere to be seen, and took her first steps in. As soon as she crossed the threshold, stone started to scrape against stone again and the door moved to shut. Madeline watched as the blue eeked its way out of her sight before the door closed with a resounding thud. The noise of the battle outside was silenced and once again Madeline found herself back in darkness.


	8. Hoggle and the Rogue

“Just standin’ there ain’t gonna move you any closer to that castle.”

Madeline heard the tap of feet moving somewhere but she wasn’t about to add to that. She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. Attempting to walk would not have been a smart move, especially when she thought she saw a descending staircase before the light was snuffed out.

“Maybe you can see in the dark but I can’t,” Madeline replied. “So unless you brought some night vision goggles with you, I’m not moving until I get some light.”

“Commanding already,” the dwarf mumbled but Madeline heard only half of it.

“What? What did you say?”

The dwarf didn’t answer her but the sound of a striking match did. The little flame flared ahead of her and down. The dwarf’s face was lit up momentarily before the flicker settled and he squeaked open the tiny door of a lantern and touched the fire to the waiting oil. With a quick turn the light grew brighter and Madeline could see the stairs in front of her and the dwarf waiting at the bottom. His foot started to tap the longer she stared at him.

“Want me to fetch another lantern or are you comin’?”

With a hand pressed to either wall at her sides, Madeline carefully took the stairs one at a time. She had no idea if one would give away and drop her into another black hole. It seemed like something Jareth would do so it was best if she tread carefully.

When she finally reached the bottom, the dwarf held the lantern over his head to light up Madeline’s face more. He regarded her with a frown before he lowered his arm, turned his back to her and started walking away. Without any options, Madeline followed.

“Where are we going?” Madeline asked as she looked at her barely visibly surroundings.

Just more stone walls, except it looked like they were walking in a sewer without the smell. Every few steps her feet splashed in a shallow puddle.

“Away from that mess,” the dwarf said as he pointed up.

Madeline instinctively looked up but was only greeted with more dark, damp stone.

“So that wasn’t planned then?” The dwarf halted quickly and turned to face her. Madeline stumbled over her feet to keep from tripping over him. He was frowning at her again and she started to feel uneasy. “I mean . . . that thing wasn’t normally in the Labyrinth, right?”

The dwarf gave a heavy sigh that moved the meager light with it. “You don’t know nothin’, do you?”

“I-I—” Sure, she knew plenty, but none of it relevant in this world.

“And theys said you’d be better off in that other world. Yous gonna get us all killed.”

His words were like a knife right into her chest and before Madeline could recover from the sting, the dwarf was already walking away.

“Wait a minute!” she yelled as she ran after him. He certainly moved quickly for his size. She reached out a hand, grabbed his shoulder and spun him around to face her. He just looked at her with that same disgruntled look he kept giving her. “You say it like it’s all my fault. My parents dumped me in an orphanage eleven years ago with next to no memory of this place. This was nothing but a faerie tale to me all that time. Until Jareth pops into my life, brings me here, gives me this,” Madeline dug into her back pocket and wrenched out her letter to wave it in the dwarf’s face, “and then throws me into his puzzle with no explanation. How’m I supposed to know what that thing was?”

The dwarf’s head nodded toward the letter in Madeline’s hand.

“What’s it say?”

Madeline scoffed. “My parents saying they were saving me from these Dissenters by sending me away and my completing the Labyrinth means life or death for the whole world. You know, light reading.”

She handed it out to him to take but he just looked at it and looked back up at her.

“That’s it?”

Madeline nodded. “That’s it.”

The dwarf blinked slowly before, once again, he turned and started to walk away.

Madeline could feel the sob knotting up in her throat and she did her best to swallow it down. It didn’t stop a couple of tears from escaping her eyes though.

“Wait! Please!” she called to him but he kept walking and the darkness around her was getting heavier. “What’s your name?”

The dwarf’s footsteps stopped and he slowly turned back around.

“Hoggle.”

“Hoggle,” Madeline said as she started walking towards him and the light. “Hoggle, please help me. You’re right. I know nothing.”

“I am?”

Madeline slowly nodded. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know how I got here and I don’t know what that thing was. Please. I could use your help.”

“You could?”

“I could.”

This time Hoggle walked forward and met Madeline at an indeterminate distance in the stone hole they were in.

“That’s a Dissenter. Well, was.”

“It told me that I was me.”

Hoggle nodded. “It knew you before you left. That one’s from your kingdom.” A question started to form on Madeline’s lips but Hoggle halted her. “Fey rulers. Jareth’s got the rest, including goblins.”

“Obviously,” Madeline interrupted.

“Yous wants me to keep going or not?”

Madeline flustered. “Sorry.”

He rolled his eyes and continued. “Somes decided to revolt. Don’t like how human-like was ruling them. The numbers gots big and yous went away.’

“So there’s a . . . rebellion?”

“Has been. That thing was rogue.”

“Rogue Fey?” Madeline asked incredulously.

“Yeah. Theys all nice and pretty when theys happy but nasty when theys angry. That one got in and Jareth had to come in and fix it.”

“It wasn’t one of his puzzles?” Hoggle shook his head. Madeline felt equally better and disturbed. It was a warm feeling knowing that her king didn’t want to see her harmed. She was also put off by the fact that even now he could be watching her every move. “It just broke in?”

“Theys been doing that. We’s been gettin’ rid of them.”

“So Jareth really doesn’t mean harm on me, otherwise he would have let that thing attack me.”

Hoggle’s eyebrow arched as high as it could go. “Don’t sound so happy. We’s got rid of that one like we’s did the rest. Yous just got in the way.”

Madeline visibly deflated. “Thanks,” she said sarcastically.

“I ain’t gonna lie,” Hoggle said as he continued walking again.

“So . . . where does this lead?” Madeline stuttered as she stumbled after Hoggle.

He lived here. He knew the Labyrinth. He helped her get away from the Dissenter. Why wouldn’t he help her get to the castle?

“How should I know?” Hoggle said in an exasperated tone.

“But . . . you live here.”

“Not in the sewers.” She couldn’t see his face but his voice sounded disgusted. “You know your sewers back there?”

“Well no but—”

“So why should I know mine?”

Madeline couldn’t tell if Hoggle was holding out on her or if he was being genuine. Jareth sent him so, chances were, Hoggle worked for the Goblin King. He could rightly be taking her away from the castle.

She halted in her tracks and called out to Hoggle. “So where are you taking me? You work for him, don’t you? You’re trying to ruin my progress.”

Hoggle turned his head back but kept his feet moving forward. “I’s ain’t takin’ you anywhere. You’s following me.”

Madeline didn’t bother to hide the sob that rushed out of her mouth. “What choice do I have?”

She threw her arms up in frustration and thumped against the stone. Her shirt caught on its rough surface and it snagged in a few places as she slid down the wall. It’s not like she expected the way to the castle to be paved in gold but how was she expected to even get there when everything was working against her? She plopped her forehead in her hands and let the tears flow. There was no telling how much time she had left nor how far she had to go. All of it was proving too much and she just wanted it to stop. Maybe living in her old world with this place as a fantasy instead of a nightmare was easier.

The soft pat of a small hand on her knee lifted her head up. A couple of tears dripped off of her chin before her hands wiped across her face to remove her remaining frustration. If Hoggle’s dwarf face could ever look caring, that’s what it would probably be as he gazed at her.

“This ain’t doing you no good, this cryin’,” he said as he stopped patting her knee. His voice was soft and it made Madeline want to smile. Almost.

“Then what will do me good?”

“C’mon,” he said as he turned and started to toddle away at a pace far slower than his usual walk.

Madeline hesitated a moment before she wiped her face on her sleeve and pushed herself up. Her hand remained on the wall for a little longer before she was able to let go of its support and follow Hoggle down the stone tunnel.

“Where are you taking me?” Madeline’s voice was weak and only carried to Hoggle’s ears on the stone’s echo.

“I’m gettin’ you outta here.”

Then Madeline did smile faintly. An inkling of doubt still lingered but she usually had a good read on people. She had to, being a foster child. It helped her adapt faster and at least she knew what to expect that way.

She didn’t realize that the light of the lantern was reflecting back off of a dead end until she’d nearly walked into the wall itself. Her palm touched the cool stone and she pressed but the wall was solid. Madeline looked down to Hoggle who didn’t look even half as confused as she did. In fact, he didn’t look confused at all.

“That’s it,” he said.

Madeline frowned. “What’s it? It’s a dead end. We must’ve gone the wrong way.

Hoggle just pointed. “That ain’t the dead end.”

When Madeline looked up, a dimly lit tunnel was running perpendicular to the one she was standing in. Only this one was filled with water and flowing pretty rapidly. There was no telling its source as it was pitch back at that end. At the other was a faint sight of light but it was much too far away to tell what it was.

Madeline turned back around to ask Hoggle what was going on but instead of the dwarf, she came face to face with a stone wall. Dead end. She walked along the wall, pressing her hands into various spots to see if it would move at all. It wouldn’t. That damned dwarf knew exactly what he did.

“HOGGLE!” Madeline yelled to the stone and water around her.

The echo of her yell shuddered the platform she was on, which looked even smaller with the dead end behind her now. The vibrations shook a few pieces off the ledge and then more crumbled after it. Madeline stepped back but the chain reaction continued and the ledge kept crumbling away. It was only seconds before she was desperately gripping at the wall and trying to balance herself on a shelf that not even her feet would fit on.

There was nowhere else to go, not that she could see in the near-darkness of the tunnel. There was just the flowing water. She could feel the remaining pieces of stone crumble out from under her feet and then there was nothing left to hold on to. Her hands groped blindly for nothing as her feet slid down with the rocks and Madeline plunged into the chill water.


	9. Oceans of Loneliness

The bubbles were hardly visible in the dark water and they rushed past Madeline’s head faster than she could think. Only when her lungs started to swell from the lack of oxygen did her feet start to kick as her arms started to pull her up. One huge gasp for air rang out when Madeline’s head broke the surface, louder than the rushing water that pushed her along.

Hair clung to her face and her arms groped wildly for anything to grab onto. All that she could see was the spot of light she was heading towards growing bigger. Everything else was dark and drenched and Madeline just wanted to keep her head over the water.

Easier said than done since she’d never learned to swim. Not a requirement in the foster care system.

Her legs, growing heavier and heavier under her denim jeans, kicked as madly as she could make them while her hands slapped at the surface of the water, not doing her much good. The speck of light disappeared as Madeline’s eyes dipped below the rushing water line and then reappeared as she forced herself back up. The water clogged her throat as she hacked and spit it out but it felt like as she did, more just wend its way up her nose. Breathing was getting harder. Her chest was getting tighter.

Madeline willed the water to move faster and the spot of light grew bigger. It was hard to see in the struggle against the flow and at first it was just white light. The water lapped at her ears as her head dipped underneath while she tried to keep her face above it. Blue started to emerge out of the white, dotted here and there with puffs of clouds. Some black specks zipped across the blue and what looked like some leaves waves back at her.

Her head bobbed fully under the water once more before it popped back up again. Before Madeline could focus her waterlogged eyes on the ever widening opening, her stomach dropped to her knees and her sodden body felt the cool air for a moment as she was hurled over the edge of the tunnel and sloshed into a waterfall. The drop was short, ten feet at most, but the splash into the receiving pool was hard and Madeline inhaled a lungful of water when her body broke the tension of its surface. The sting didn’t compare to the throat full of water sucking away what little air that remained in her body.

The force of the rushing falls pushed her down, down, down. The brightness of the sky above her faded quickly and the darkness of the water started to take her in. Her lungs started to burn and her kicking legs started to slow as the fight faded away with the falls. Under water, Madeline tried to will her arms to paddle but as she watched them, they floated aimlessly around her like useless weeds at the bottom of a pond.

Her blink was slow, trapped in the vacuum of the water. Her eyes closed and the sleep that waited for her there was like a warm blanket on a cold day. Why open her eyes again? But the voice, the same one that kept pushing her forward, demanded she open them. The pitch rose, its demand becoming more insistent the longer she didn’t respond.

Slowly, Madeline pulled her eyelids back open, flinching against the onslaught of water. The cold touch of metal pushed itself against her throat. Her hand floated to her head and her finger pricked against a prong. In front of her, shifting and swirling in the moving water, was a snarling face. Focusing was hard as sleep called to her again but this person, this thing, held the instrument pushing at her throat.

Its face became clear as it came closer. Its eyes were vibrant green, matching its scaly skin. Its hair looked like seaweed that slapped at her face in the current. Its teeth looked like the Dissenter’s teeth, jagged and ferocious. Still, Madeline didn’t resist. The option wasn’t there as she sank lower.

Her eyes closed again and the voice was so far away. It was barely a whisper in her ear. No longer did she feel the edge of the weapon against her throat and her hair swished around her face as she began to move through the water. A cushion pressed itself to her back and Madeline allowed herself to sink into it. The darkness on the other side of her eyelids faded and she heard a distant splash followed by a cold rush of air hitting her face.

Madeline’s lungs convulsed and water gurgled in her throat. The cushion at her back was replaced with something much harder as she dropped on something solid. The water still choking her thrust its way out of her mouth and nose and Madeline hacked and gasped, wanting to expel as much water and inhale as much air as she possibly could.

She turned to her side and let the water roll out of her mouth while the sand underneath her grit into her skin. Sights and sounds slowly came back to her as her senses returned. She cautiously opened her eyes and this time bright sunlight stung them. When the blinding light faded to viable sight, she saw, only feet from her, water lapping at a sandy shore. Off in the distance was the opening she fell through; the falls just barely audible.

Next to her, mere feet away, lay a gasping . . . thing. Unlike her, as she breathed deeply to catch her breath, it was gasping, searching for air it couldn’t find. Between it and her lay a trident. Madeline looked at her finger and saw a small mark where she touched one of the prongs. She brought her shaky hand to her neck and winced at the burn she felt. Next to the claw marks of the Dissenter was a different pain fitting the shape of the trident’s rod.

Pushing herself to a sitting position required dredging strength from her deepest reserves but upright, she could better see the thing. Its eyes, slowly blinking as hers were, were the same green orbs from under water. Its seaweed hair, slick and slimy, splayed about its head and its scales shimmered in the sunlight. The glittering was almost pretty until another gasping wheeze shattered the image.

Its fingers dug at the sand, unable to move much more than that. Where legs should have been was a thick fin tapping lightly against the sand. Out of water, as it lay there dying, its nasty teeth didn’t look so vicious as they sat in the gasping mouth.

Madeline pulled her way to her hands and knees, spitting up more water as her lungs sloshed around with the movement. The voice was back from the depths, loud and clear and advising her to stay away. Despite her better judgment, Madeline crawled closer to the suffering creature. Maybe if she could just push it into the water it’d be okay. Her hand stretched out and just as her fingers were about to touch the scaly skin, the thing reared up, snarling, and snapped at her. Madeline quickly pulled her hand away and fell back onto her butt.

Leave it.

The voice that sounded in her head wasn’t her voice but a distinct one entirely its own. Still cradling her unharmed hand, she looked around and splashing out in the water caught her eye. A tentacle broke the surface, curled in the air and came down with a splash. Moments later a pinkish-gray head, or maybe a body, rose over the water. It bobbed up, showing its light bulb shape with the beginnings of tentacles underneath, before it came back down, allowing only its black saucer eyes to crest the water to stare at her.

Leave it, the voice repeated.

The creature’s glass-like eyes bore into her and Madeline felt compelled to speak.

“Is-is that you?”

Its giant eyes blinked once.

“Were you the one th-that—”

One of its tentacles crashed through the water and cut out Madeline’s sentence. On the bottom of the tentacle were a number of suction pads. Those must have been what she was laying on before she hit land. She looked back over at the beached fish creature at her side. Its gasps were less frantic. The fight was leaving it as it left her underwater.

You are not entitled to save it.

“How-how can I hear you? How are you talking?”

Such is the way of the queen.

“I’m not a queen.”

Its tentacles thrashed in the water and it frowned. If she didn’t know better, she’d think the creature was insulted.

“Is that,” she looked to the creature, barely breathing now, “a Dissenter?”

Merfolk needn’t dissent to be vile. Leave it.

Madeline’s eyes narrowed as she watched the merman take its last breath.

“Was this Jareth?” She awkwardly pulled herself to her feet, trying to set a tone of defiance. Unfortunately her defiance wobbled with her knees and she crashed back down. Unwilling to alter her tone, Madeline kept on as if she didn’t just prove herself weak. “Did he set this thing on me to prove some sick point?”

The Merfolk are out of the king’s control and care nothing for the queen. They are only themselves.

Madeline rubbed at her eyes and swat away a fly that was already on its way to the corpse next to her. There were things in this Labyrinth that didn’t belong, things that tried to help and things that didn’t care, one way or another, if she lived or died. There was no telling what was what until snarling teeth were in her face. Maybe it was better to die alone and fighting in the Labyrinth than just alone in the other world. At least here things were willing to talk to her.

“And you?” she whispered, not knowing if the creature would even hear her.

I am not it.

She looked out at the vastness of the water beyond the creature. It looked like it flowed in the opposite direction from the castle but it’d already helped her once. Maybe it’d help her again.

“Can you help me get to the castle?”

This time its body swayed back and forth, an obvious no.

Listen to your unfamiliar voice. It knows more than you.

Before she could ask what it was talking about, its eyes dipped below the surface of the water and the creature disappeared. Madeline gapped at the vast wet emptiness in front of her and tried to keep herself from sinking back into the loneliness inside of her. Every time a companion, a second voice to a second body, left her, it was a push back to her former self where no one was all that concerned about talking to her. Even the sea creature who only had a voice inside her head was better than the death and sand circling her now. Even to just hear Jareth’s voice, no matter what he’d say, would be just a little comfort.

Madeline flicked a little bit of the sand next to her leg as she mumbled a thanks to the creature that saved her life. Hopefully the words would tumble out to it, wherever it was.

There was a nag at the back of her mind urging her to move on. The thought alone of continuing on was exhausting. Every breath hurt and her muscles were cramping with pain. Still, knowing she wouldn’t reach the castle sitting down, Madeline pulled herself to her feet. She swayed as she tried to regain her balance but was still able to survey what stood before her.

Just beyond the sand, woods dense enough to block out light called to her. There was nowhere else to go except the water behind her where surely more Merfolk waited. And they were probably angry at the death of one of their own. If the creature was right, and it looked like it was, the other Merfolk wouldn’t care who she was. The forest it was, then.

The trees cast shadows over the sand and as Madeline stepped into them, she started to shiver. Soaked through entirely and weighed down by exhaustion, pain and heavy wet clothes, she willed her leadened legs forward into the thick. It wasn’t long before chirping bugs drowned out the softly crashing surf and Madeline folded her arms across herself in a feeble attempt to keep in the heat.

**xXx**

“This is entirely too much!”

Stala swat at the crystal ball in Jareth’s hand and it crashed to the floor where the shards melted into a puddle.

“Is it necessary to nearly drown our daughter to prove her worth?”

Jareth swung his legs in front of him and stood up from his throne. He casually walked to the window where Dorian was standing, tapping his walking stick against the stone floor as he went. The Labyrinth held his attention for a moment before he looked over to Dorian. The man interrupted his gazed and looked over at the Goblin King. The noble’s face was drawn and pallid, the bags under his eyes deep and heavy. Jareth could see the torment he was causing but they knew it had to be done, even Stala despite her ravings.

“Do you not see, Stala,” Jareth said as she continued to hold Dorian’s gaze, “that she has been pushed to her physical end and yet is carrying on?”

Dorian broke Jareth’s stare and looked down at his hands before refocusing his watch over the Goblin King’s kingdom.

“Where you had your whole life to prove yourself as a suitable queen for Dorian, Maiae has a mere thirteen hours. Our time is too short for anything less than drastic measures.”

Stala’s eyes blazed from across the throne room but the tension in her body dissipated and her eyes started to glisten with approaching tears.

“Please don’t do this,” she begged as she scurried over to Jareth. She took his gloved hand in hers and held it to her heart. He looked from their clasped hands to her face just in time to see a tear run down her cheek. “Please. Her body is one thing but this will destroy her.”

“We had better hope not.”

He hid his concern behind a wall of indifference. Right now he had to play the part of the Goblin King. Normally he enjoyed it but now, his heart tore for Maiae as her parents’ did. He wished there was another way. His queen must be strong of body and mind. If only they’d kept her in their world this could have been avoided. He only hoped that when this was all over, Maiae would understand.

“Is there nothing else?”

Jareth slipped his hand out of Stala’s grasp and started to walk away.

“No.”

The taping of his boots rattled into the throne room as he climbed the stairs and left Stala and Dorian behind. This next task he needed to be alone. He couldn’t let them see how much it was going to hurt him.


	10. Of Nightmares in Dreamscapes

The woods thickened the further Madeline carried on. The ceiling of leaves over her head blocked out nearly all light although a wayward sunbeam snaked its way to the ground every once in a while. Madeline stuck her fingers into a nearby ray and watched as her skin glittered. But the jitter in her hand rattled away the serene image.

Her jeans were leaden and felt like they were pulling her backwards. Her shoes squished and her shirt clung to her, frigid, sending goosebumps rolling over her body. Madeline stuck her tongue between her teeth to stop the chattering but it wasn’t long before she tasted blood. Every blink lasted longer and longer as it was a drag to open her eyes back up. The forest was starting to blur. The shimmer at the edges of her sight was getting brighter. Strange caws and thumps started getting closer and Madeline was thirsty. So thirsty.

Bits of leaves and dirt crawled their way up her pant legs, scratching at her skin. She tried to swat at it once but fell into a tree. It wasn’t worth the risk of toppling over to exert any more energy. Each swipe, each topple, was that much less energy to propel her to the castle. Madeline needed to keep her legs working. Nothing funky. Just walking and that was hard enough.

She chanced a glance over her shoulder, feeling the dizzy flow through her head, and something licked the sight at the corner of her eye. When her eyes focused, only the leaves of a small bush were rustling. Nothing else. The woods was following close behind her, pressing in on her back. Another shrub moved and a faint laughter prickled her ears but there was still nothing but green to see.

There was a splash and Madeline’s body cringed involuntarily. It was the Labyrinth. Bodies of water with crazed merpeople could pop up anywhere. Her head slowly leaned forward where she looked upon a small babbling brook. Only a few feet wide, it was, at most, a foot deep at its center but it was enough.

Madeline stepped back out of the water, not bothering to listen to the squish or feel the icy chill numbing her toes. She knelt down at the edge of the small bank. As her knees pressed into the dirt she thought about the stains her jeans were going to collect. She didn’t care.

Her fingertips danced on top of the flowing water, its coolness for once refreshing. She could nearly taste the water through her skin. Madeline leaned forward and watched her reflection for a second as it rippled and wavered with the current. Her face was dotted with small, smooth stones and the occasional tiny fish. When her hand penetrated the surface, all of that disappeared, falling away through her cupped hand.

The water sloshed around, spilling over her fingers as she brought it to her lips and drank deeply. Her hands were empty almost immediately and she dipped them back into the stream for a second fill. Again and again she drank until she could feel the water sloshing in her belly and her tongue no longer screamed for water.

Madeline’s reflection was back, staring up at her and smiling. She put her hand to her face and felt her mouth. No smile. Still her reflection stayed the same. Happy. Glowing. Madeline frowned slightly and her reflection started to waver away. Each ripple took away a piece of her face, floated it downstream and something new came to replace it. The wavering, watery pieces settled together to form a picture. A bedroom. A huge four-poster with a white feathery, furry blanket. A fireplace the size of her apartment with flames licking the stones that contained it. Its light cast a warming glow over the entire room. There were chairs and chaises scattered about, soft white rugs scattered on the floor. The one window she could see took up nearly an entire wall. Sheer white curtains fluttered in the breeze and the candles in nearby sconces flickered with its touch. Stone offset the white and it made Madeline think. Whose room was this . . . ?

She reached out her hand and her fingers danced atop the water again but the water wasn’t cool. It was as warm as this watery room looked. Her fingers pressed through the surface and the room swallowed them whole. What she should have seen through the water was gone. She pulled her hand back out and everything was intact, including the room shimmering in front of her.

Her fingers went in again, this time pushing to her wrist, her elbow, nearly her shoulder. The creek wasn’t nearly this deep and she didn’t feel an ounce of wetness. Madeline pushed her other hand through until she looked like she was rooting around for something, her arms disappeared and her head only inches from the water.

Feeling silly but compelled at the same time, Madeline lowered her face to the water. She still expected it to be chill against her face but instead she could feel the heat of the flames on her skin. Holding her breath and closing her eyes, she tipped further in and as if losing her balance, the rest of her body followed, throwing her into an abyss. Her stomach fluttered as a light breeze tickled her face but the feeling of falling still gripped her. Her eyes creaked open but the blackness was overwhelming. She couldn’t tell if they really were open or not.

Madeline squeezed her eyes so tightly shut her muscles ached and there was no mistaking they were closed. Slowly she released them and inched them open. Instead of blackness she was greeted with a navy sky and lights twinkling beneath her. The feeling of stone pressed its way into her fingers and when she looked down, she was leaning on a large stone sill. In the expanse in front of her she could just barely make out the twists and turns of the Labyrinth, set darker among the dark. Flickers of light dotted the landscape, making it look something like a city.

The sheer curtain fluttered onto her face and Madeline raised a hand to sweep it away. With a turn she was facing inward at the room in the creek now so much more than a wavering image. She took a step in and a softness she’d never felt greeted her feet. On the floor was a white fur rug. Madeline fought the urge to get down and press her face to it. The room was exactly as it looked in the image but far larger than she could have ever imagined. She felt dwarfed standing on the edge of this great expanse.

The fabric against her skin glided around her as she walked and when she came to a mirror, she started. The white nightgown, while down to her ankles, was nearly translucent. Heat flooded Madeline’s face and she tried to arrange her arms in ways that would cover the pieces she’d never dared exposed before.

“There’s no need to be embarrassed.”

Madeline started and turned to the voice behind her. Out of the shadows stepped her king and her cheeks flooded even hotter and the loss at what to do overwhelmed her. He walked closer to her, his white boots making the odd click as his steps found stone floor. His white leggings revealed nothing and his white flowing shirt was opened nearly to his waistline, his pendant dangling against his fair skin.

“You will be the queen. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Madeline tried to speak but her words choked in her throat. She started to fluster and she could feel the panic rising in her chest. When the king was within reach he reached out a bare hand and lightly brushed her naked shoulder. The imprint was searing yet her skin prickled and Madeline calmed instantly at his touch.

She couldn’t look him in the eye as exposed as she was. She just couldn’t. Yet hers found his and their gazes locked. The corner of his mouth turned up and he reached for her hand. Madeline’s mind was a jumble of panic but her body belied that. She didn’t shake as he placed her hand against his chest. His heartbeat pulsed through her palm and straight into her own heart. Their rhythms synched and for a moment Madeline’s breath was taken away. Her breathing was jagged as she ran her hand along his bare flesh, her ears pulsing heat when her fingertip grazed a nipple. His smile widened and his hand came up to brush her cheek. She leaned into the touch and closed her eyes, savoring the feeling. The scent of peaches and power and fantasy filled her nose and she opened her eyes to see him staring at her, want on his face.

His hand moved to the back of her neck and then pressed into her shoulder as he urged her forward. Madeline’s hand stayed underneath the flowing material of his shirt as it slid around his ribs and settled on his back. His arms wrapped around her and she pressed her cheek to his chest as he held her tight. Madeline could live like this forever – wrapped in his warmth and his scent and his strength. Maybe this was it. Maybe she didn’t have to get all the way to the castle after all. She closed her eyes tight again and tried to absorb as much of him as she could. Anything could happen in the Labyrinth. It could just be a trick and she’d be back in the forest hugging a tree as soon as she opened her eyes.

His pressure on her lightened and Madeline’s eyes fluttered open apprehensively, afraid of what they’d reveal. Her held breath released in relief as the room greeted her but her head spun trying to figure out what happened. No longer was she standing in her king’s arms but prone on the giant bed, the fur tickling her skin. She lifted her head and gasped when she saw her king sitting on the edge of the bed staring at her, the slightest hint of a smile tickling his lips. Without shifting his gaze, he turned around and started to crawl to her. Madeline’s sight wavered and nearly the only thing visible on Jareth was his skin and his pendant, the rest sinking into the white of the bed. Her eyes bounced between his and the pendant. Should she sit up? She felt kind of silly laid out like a plank with her head tilted up. As soon as she moved her elbow underneath her, Jareth was on her, his hand easing the side of her face, his weight pressing down on top of her, settling into the pillows.

She shimmied out her hand from underneath her and touched her fingers to her face. She watched her own hand trail his cheekbone, down to his chin and shyly trace his bottom lip. All the while his eyes remained on her, studying her, and when Madeline looked up to him, his head started to dip and his lips closed the gap to hers. She’d dreamed about this moment. Literally. His kiss. And now it was going to happen! Right?

Madeline held her breath as his lips touched hers, their warmth pulsating through her skin and straight down her body. They lingered there for a moment, not moving, not breathing, until his mouth opened slightly and in turn, Madeline followed along. She’d never kissed a boy, any boy, before and her first kiss was with a king! She felt her hands start to shake and she tried to split her focus between not drooling and not shaking so hard she punched him. But Jareth was clam, easing his mouth open and guiding Madeline along. His tongue played in her mouth and hers played back. She couldn’t tell if she was going it right. He said nothing so she didn’t change.

Just when she thought her lungs were about to burst, the king broke the kiss and traveled his lips to her chin and down her neck. Madeline gasped, forgetting she could use her nose to breathe if her mouth was occupied, the noise shattering the ringing silence of the room, drowning out the crackling in the fireplace. Her hands gripped at his hair as his lips rippled their power throughout her body. Even the touch of his bare hands against her skin was almost too much to bear. Her mind started to shut off, the inexperienced questions died away and Madeline started to listen to her body. It told her to follow him.

The urge between her legs made them part and the king slipped between them with ease, pinning her underneath her nightgown. When he stopped, it was as if he never needed breath. He hovered over her, calm and sedate, as Madeline nearly gasped for air underneath him.

His hands found the wisps of straps barely touching her shoulders and brought them down. Madeline guided her arms through the loops until they were free. Her ears beat red as she thought about the direction her clothing was heading. A slight breeze tickled her skin as he pulled the gown lower and pressed a kiss between her breasts. She lifted her butt only slightly as he eased the delicate material over her hips and her legs came up and stepped out of the clothing before the king could remove it completely.

Madeline tried not to think about her nakedness, how exposed and vulnerable she was just lying there. Then Jareth covered her with himself and those fears disappeared. He was her clothing. His shirt and pendant were gone but she could still feel the softness of his leggings against her skin.

She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch as he grazed her cheek with his fingers. Her king was going to become her lover. After all these years, after all this time, it was finally going to happen. As it should.

A sharp pinch caught her jaw and Madeline’s eyes wrenched open to see her king studying her like an insect. She tried to move her head but he held her chin fast, twisting her skin. She frowned and tried to speak but only a squeak came out. His lip curled up into a sneer and her head jerked to the side as he threw it and pulled himself up.

Every thought in her brain crashed into each other. Was this a sick joke? A test? Real? Madeline lay stiff as a board on the softness of the bed as the whiplash of the moment overtook her. It was so sudden and abrasive that it was almost funny. She propped herself up on her elbows, momentarily forgetting her nudity, and inched a small, flirty smile on her face. But when she saw the king had changed, the joke dropped right off the bed.

No longer was he free and open in his white clothing but shut off and buttoned up in cloaks of black. His back was to her as he stared out the wide window and Madeline groped desperately for something to cover herself with. What was going on?

“You’re not what I thought,” he said, his sneer dripping from his voice.

Madeline’s face felt like it was going to ignite. The red must have clashed with the white fur she pulled up to her neck. She was exposed and ashamed and guilty and buried underneath all of that, she was furious. The brewing, wracking sobs of shame drowned it out but it struggled to stay afloat. The anger sent her heart fluttering against the stop/start of embarrassment.

“I—”

“You are not a queen.” He didn’t move when he spoke and the way his voice echoed around the room, his words could have come from anywhere, not just the statue at the window.

“But y-you haven’t given me a chance,” she said as she lifted herself to her knees and started to scoot to the edge of the bed.

“I’ve seen all I need to see.”

Holding the fur to her body, the only protection she had, she placed one foot lightly in front of the other and made her way slowly towards him. The closer she got, the cooler the room got and she started to shiver. She didn’t bother to try and hide it.

Madeline reached out her hand but paused it inches from his arm. Her fingers twitched in the cold air. She pressed forward and just as she was about to touch the foreboding fabric, he wrenched away from her as if he’d just been shocked. He looked down at her with a face twisted in disgust, as if she oozed as she stood there.

Madeline’s hand stayed suspended and she stared as the space where his arm used to be. Tears prickled in her eyes as she lowered her arm and when she looked to his hardened face, the wet slid from her eyes, running away down her cheeks.

A finely arched eyebrow quirked up, lifting the sneer into a scowl. “You’re pathetic.”

He took a step forward and Madeline’s gaze dropped to his chest, staring at the pendant that swung around his neck. She brought her hand up to her own throat only to feel nothing. Her smaller mirror crystal was gone.

“You were rejected by family after family in that plan, drone world for a reason. Did you really think it’d be any different here?”

Madeline’s gaze dropped to the floor and she took matching steps back as the king pushed forward, ripping his gaze right through her. Her throat tightened and started to close with the sobs choking it up. Her breath started coming out in big, heaving gasps and when she bumped into the footboard of the four-poster, she grabbed onto it for support. If she fell, he didn’t look like he was going to catch her.

“Go back to that other world, that gray world where you were nothing. You’ll always be nothing and you’ll die as nothing with no one to care about you when you’re gone. You’ll sit alone in that dismal apartment and rot. It’s where the likes of you belong.”

She could feel his breath on her face and it turned her tears to ice. She wanted to look up and see if his face really meant what he was saying but she couldn’t. The pain was too heavy.

“What a disgusting choice for a queen. Even your parents threw you away.”

Madeline’s back slid down the dark wood of the footboard until she could go no further. She wrapped the blanket tighter around her to keep out the arctic cold trying to freeze her veins. Her hands trembled under the fur and Madeline looked at a point beyond the king’s boots, somewhere between the floor and the air above it. The molecules there held her gaze as the toe of his black boot dug into the fur.

The air stayed silent as he knelt down in front of her, except for the deafening ring in her ears.

“Did you hear me?”

His head didn’t move to try and catch her eye and Madeline didn’t dare look up. Instead she wrapped the blanket tighter and sank closer to the floor.

“That’s where you belong, you know. On the floor. Where all dirt belongs. As if you ever had a chance with the likes of me.”

Madeline clenched her eyes shut against the daggers fastened to the ends of his words. Her whole body started to shiver and she tried to hold herself still but she might as well been dancing. She could hear noise, the tone of his voice picking at her ears but his words were no longer understandable. The floor softened and Madeline’s stomach sunk as the floor dropped out from underneath her.

Her eyes remained clenched, tears fighting to break free and one winning the battle every so often. The silent thrum in her ears turned into a roar and Madeline just wanted it to stop. Everything needed to stop. Her life needed to stop.

A sob tumbled out of her knotted throat, then another and another until they were fighting each other to get out first. She didn’t hide her wails in her blackness. She didn’t care if he heard. With one last haggard intake of breath, Madeline ripped out a scream that threatened to shatter her own eardrums. And then, like a vacuum, all noise, all life, was sucked up and silenced. Not even the thrum in her ears survived.


	11. Vengeance Under the Blood Moon

Tears prickled and clung to Stala’s lashes as boots slowly clicked down the stairs behind her. Her sniff was as silent as she could make it and the pad of her finger blotted at the moisture at her eyes. If only she had a mirror so she could see if her face was sobbed splotchy. It was rare that color rose to her cheeks but she couldn’t deny the heat flaming under her skin.

The presence that walked up behind her was black. It weighted on her shoulders as if Jareth were actually standing on them. The blackness clouded into Stala’s eyes but a couple of hard blinks pushed them away. She needed to keep light but the dread was so overwhelming.

“Now we wait.” Jareth’s breath slid down Stala’s collar and froze her skin.

Stala swallowed hard, the gulp echoing off the stone. “Wait for what?” Her voice was hoarse, dragged over glass as she watched her daughter get tortured. “You’ve destroyed her.” She looked to Dorian who stood in the corner of the throne room, staring out the window. He could have been a statue.

“Let’s hope not.” Jareth wanted that to sound confident, king-like, but he couldn’t hide the small crack in his facade. Not with Stala choking back tears in front of him.

“And if the blood moon doesn’t rise?”

Jareth watched a ripple move across Stala’s shoulders but she didn’t turn to look at him. He didn’t move to look at her. Instead of answering, he turned his cape, flicking Stala’s leg, and slowly walked to his throne. He sat softly, afraid his throne, and his world, would shatter under his weight. If Maiae didn’t pull through, his fear would explode into a reality. All he knew, all Stala and Dorian knew, would crumble.

Jareth raised a finger and a crystal appeared, slowly rotating in front of him. He wanted Stala and Dorian to join him on their own. Asking, pleading, wasn’t his way. But when he looked up, they were stock still, glowing fixtures stark against his stone room. He sighed a quiet sigh and turned his gaze back to the crystal. The act was hard enough. He really didn’t want to watch the aftermath on his own.

**xXx**

The wet streamed down Madeline’s cheeks, cooling her skin. Before she opened her eyes, she could feel it, each tear raking across her skin. But the darkness was good. Better than the light. Better than Jareth. Her chest was empty, her pulse dead. There was no point in going on. No point in finishing the Labyrinth. Why? It was all a joke. Jareth didn’t care about her. Not really. But what if this was a test? To test her resilience? Her will? No. It was too cruel a test, even for a Goblin King. To take the one thing that held her together all her life and rip it all away for the sake of building character? No.

Madeline’s breath stuttered out over her lips and she curled further into herself. Twigs and dirt scratched into the side of her face, stuck to her tear-stained cheeks. She could feel her own clothes again, damp and frozen and clinging to her withering form. She could just waste away and it wouldn’t matter. No one would care. Maybe that’s what she’d do. Shrivel and die in the Labyrinth. It didn’t matter which world she died in. Both of them chewed her up and spit her out all the same.

Her warm breath bounced back to her face, warming her skin for a flash of a second before it settled back into a wet chill. Slowly, Madeline started to become aware of her surroundings again. The throb in her ears lessened. Or her brain started to beat it back. Faintly, she could hear water babbling over rocks. The rancid little brook that just spit her out. A hoot echoed far over her head. Leaves rustled behind her. A soft breeze flicked over the top of her head. All normal things. All too normal for her abnormal life.

The sound of crushing leaves and dirt slowly made its way to her ears. Slow, deliberate noise, the crunching painful, rhythmic. Distant at first, the crunch came closer, its beat slowing, a swish of flicking waves added to the tone. They were steps. That much was obvious. But Madeline didn’t care. Let it step right over her. On her. Crush her to death. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Something pointed poked her ribs but the only response Madeline gave was the normal movement with the nudge. Forcing against it would have signified a fight but she didn’t have the will for that anymore. She felt the poke again, this time harder. She let her body move but it settled right back into her fetal line. She wasn’t playing dead. She was already dead on the inside. Now it was time for the outside to catch up.

A sharp pain radiated in her side and Madeline let out a yelp despite herself. She forced her eyes not to look up, not to look at the thing poking and jabbing at her. She curled right back into herself and the second she settled, the pain came again, harder. Madeline bit her lip to keep from crying out and her face stayed down. Now she could hear the thing wheezing.

“I knows you alive. Gerrup!”

It kicked again but Madeline had already braced herself for it. That didn’t mean it hurt any less. Pain blossomed out of a spot on her ribs, echoing throughout the rest of her body. It was dulling everything else, watering down Jareth and his torture, the fact that she was nothing. It was better to concentrate on the physical hurt.

“Gerrup, I said! Was wrong wif you?”

The thing sent two more sharp kicks to her ribs and Madeline let a short sob tumble out of her lips. She couldn’t hold it back anymore. Kick me more, she thought. Stomp me out completely.

Leaves crunched again as the thing walked around her, moving towards her head. Madeline inched her eyes open and saw the ragged brown boots and pale, tan legs of the thing abusing her. It’s legs were as thick as pipe cleaners and his feet not much bigger. It could inflict some mighty blows despite it’s size.

Madeline blinked slowly and when her eyes were opening again, something was charging at them. Before she could react, white pain exploded in her eye and her hands automatically went to her face to cup the wound. She groaned and rolled onto her back, momentarily forgetting about her defeat. She could feel the tears pooling in the socket and her nose started to run. She sniffed and gingerly blinked, the pain dull and strong.

“So you eyes is the weak spot, huh?”

Madeline blinked her good eye rapidly, letting the canopy over her come into focus. The moon was scattered amongst the leaves. It seemed to be pulsing. Its silver light shining down on her. Her hands pulled back from her damaged eye but it barely made a difference. Everything was fuzzy out of that one, smeared like finger paints. She put her hand back over the bad eye and rolled her head to the side to get a look at the creature that blinded her.

It was an elfish-looking thing, not a goblin but not a dwarf either. It was exceptionally thin, wiry. It’s clothes hung in tatters off its body. Its ears pointed at angles off to the sides of its head, its eyes huge and bug-like and its smile was almost sadistic. It parted its lips and its teeth were razors, reminding her of the thing back in the stone maze, back from when she still cared.

She turned her head back to look up at the moon, it’s shine curling her into a blanket of comfort, like what her mom might do to make her feel better. If she had one.

Another blow knocked into her temple and Madeline sucked in a quick breath. She rolled her one good eye toward the thing and glared at it as a headache started to pulse. No, she still didn’t care whether she won or lost the Labyrinth, but this little creature was starting to piss her off. Beat her to death, sure, but at this rate she’d sooner die of annoyed fury.

“Theys said you’d be easy. And fun.” The corner of its mouth quirked up into a wicked little grin and Madeline narrowed her eye.

Her lips pursed and barely parted when she spoke. “Who said?”

“Theys. The king. Goblins.”

It wound up for another kick but this time Madeline saw it coming. As it came forward, aiming for her good eye, her hand snapped out and grabbed the toe of its shoe in her fist. It’s shoe was some kind of burlap, tied at its ankle, that scratched at her palm. It tried to wrench its foot away but Madeline held firm.

“Stop kicking me,” she grumbled through gritted teeth.

Before she could blink, the thing kicked out its free leg and swung it at her face. She flinched enough to get her already wounded eye out of its line but the foot caught her nose. Madeline heard a crunch, her eyes tearing and she could feel wet starting to run out of her nostrils.

Still holding onto the thing’s foot as it lay on its stomach, Madeline moved her other hand to her nose and dabbed at it with her fingers. She pulled them away and looked at the blood that dripped down the tips and onto her knuckles. She tightened her grip on the thing’s foot and wrenched it closer. It scrabbled at the dead leaves and dirt, trying to claw itself some traction.

Madeline held it under her hand and put her weight into it as she pulled herself up. The pressure pushed a frazzled squeal out of it as it tried to push up against her hand. She wobbled on her feet as she stood, the forest tilting a little before her. She closed her bad eye to get her bearings and once the world stopped swaying, she opened it back up again. Focus was slowly starting to creep back into her vision.

Her hand lifted and the thing skittered up and made an attempt to dash away but Madeline grabbed its arm and pulled it back. She held its arm in one hand and poked it, hard, in the ribs with the other. It winced with each poke and struggled to get out of her grip.

“How does that feel, huh?” Madeline’s voice was almost a growl as she jabbed at the creature.

Grunts wended out of its mouth as its breathing became labored. “Stop!” it squeaked.

Bubbles started to rise inside of Madeline. As each one popped, it opened a fissure in her psyche. Every painful moment in her life rose to the surface and burst open, exposing all of her pain and anguish from eighteen years of existence. A little piece of her, buried somewhere in a corer of herself, tried to lull her back into her safe fetal position. To just let herself curl up and die like she was about to before this thing came along. But the pain in her head, everything she’d gone through in the Labyrinth, the abuse and neglect from her fosters, all were manifesting in this little pestering creature. It’s gaunt, elfin frame started to fizzle away to be replaced by faces from her past: horrible step-siblings, evil classmates, Jareth. They twisted and turned and swirled in a cluster of colors in front of her and the greater part of her stomped down on the part that gave up and kick-started the rest that was raring to get back at it all.

“Why?” Madeline snarled. She could feel a twisted smile creep onto her face. “It’s FUN!”

She yelled the last word and the creature cowered back. Madeline released its arm and stood. It froze in place for a moment, cowering at her feet, before it skittered its legs underneath itself and tried to scamper off. Instead of letting it run off, Madeline took a step forward and jerked her foot out, connecting the toe of her shoe to its backside. With a squeak it lifted off the ground and flew a few feet in front of her. It thudded against the ground as it splayed out in the dirt.

The forest lightened around her and Madeline looked towards the sky. The moon was glowing blindingly bright. Maybe it was her damaged eye playing tricks on her but the moon almost looked tinged pink. The tingling in her hands brought her face back down and she raised her arms. She squinted at her hands and brought them closer to her face. Pulsing off of her skin was a faint glow. It could have been the air glittering with the moonlight but really, it looked like the glow was coming from her skin, not reflecting off of it. The tiny hairs themselves shimmered with a faint light. When she held her arms up, the darkness around her crept just a little further away.

The sound of rustling leaves touched her ears and her focus was drawn back to the simpering creature that was so insistent on kicking and poking her to death only moments before. Madeline clasped her hands behind her back and strolled over to it. She watched as it flipped itself over and its eyes bulged wide as she neared.

“Should I stop?” Her voice was a calm before a murderer’s storm, horror dripping off of every word. The thing shivered.

When it didn’t respond, Madeline swooped down in one quick movement, grabbed its arm and flung it away from her. The thunk it made as it smacked against a tree rattled something deep in the pit of her but whatever held her now didn’t allow that revulsion to rise.

The pink tinge Madeline thought she saw on the moon before was now undeniable. The forest was coated in a light red, barely pink anymore, and the glow off of Madeline’s skin was getting brighter. It should have been blacking out her surroundings but everything she looked at was that much sharper.

“All my life people have kicked me while I was down but none actually physically did it until you.” The thing gurgled as Madeline walked closer. She could see its head covered in blood and her stomach roiled but nothing came up. That coolness that captured her kept the heat down.

She squatted down next to it and pressed her jaw into a hard line. “Now I find I’m really a princess, heiress to a kingdom, saving grace of a race of people, and you think you can keep kicking?” Madeline’s voice was a shriek by the time she was finished and the creature flinched.

It opened its one good eye, the other smashed in by bark, and stared up at Madeline. The ‘p’ puttered on its lips and she could hear little breaths of air puff out but no audible words came. She saw the word ‘princess’ stumble silently over its lips and a snide smirk ticked at the corner of her mouth.

“Maiae. Of the Fey. But you won’t see me serve my purpose, will you?”

Slowly it rose a shaking hand up to her, a plea, but instead of taking it gently, Madeline, Maiae, grabbed it and flung the creature again, making sure it slammed into another sturdy trunk.

“No one will kick me down again!”

Her voice ricochetted around the forest and floated up to the moon. In an instant, the trees were flooded with a blood red light, replacing the glow of the moon. Maiae looked up at it, and it pulsed red like a heart. Her glimpse only lasted a second before the shimmer radiating from her before burst out of her in a torrent of blinding white light.

Her knees hit the forest floor and Maiae wailed as the light burst out of her. All she could see was white. She could feel it radiating out of her pores, flowing out of her mouth. It was almost painful but something inside her told her not quite. Breath couldn’t get down her throat, past the force of the light, and her lungs started to ache.

Just as quickly as it came, the light receded back into her. The forest came back into focus, no longer bathed in the blood of the red moon. Maiae inhaled sharply and dropped onto her back, coughing and choking as she gagged on the air. It was Madeline that finally sat up, her hand wrapped around her neck as if she were just being choked. She stared at her hands, expecting the light to shoot back out of them but there was only a hint of a glow there, barely perceptible even to her. Her head tilted up and met the rays of the moon, once again silver. What the hell just happened?

She moved and stretched her arms, feeling as if she hadn’t really felt them in ages. Was that her that did all those things? Was she possessed? Madeline glanced around the forest and her eyes fell upon the clump of unmoving creature at the base of a tree. A couple feet above it was a wet-looking splatter mark, almost black in the shadows.

At first her legs didn’t want to push her up but after a couple stumbles, Madeline got to her feet and hobbled over to it. With a shaking hand she reached out to it. The tips of her fingers squished into bloody skin and she had to suppress a gag. It didn’t move. Slowly she pressed it down and flipped it over. Its face was no longer discernible, its features a mess of gore in its head. It’s neck twisted at an odd angle and the rest of it was limp and chill.

Madeline’s breath caught in her throat as she stumbled backward. Her ankles caught each other and she fell, her butt colliding with the forest floor. Revulsion finally choked up from her stomach, the strength of Maiae no longer there to keep it down. She flipped to her side and heaved the horror out, trying to expel everything that she knew she’d just done.

She’d killed that creature but why? Because it kicked her. What the hell did she become? Did that red moon do it? Was that really the Maiae she was supposed to be? No way. No no no. She was not going to be some bitch of a queen that murdered at the snap of her fingers. She wasn’t going to be queen at all. Was she?

Jareth spit in her face but was it real? It certainly felt it. He had destroyed her, or so she thought. Maybe it really was just a stunt, a catalyst to get her here. To get her to kill? Would the Goblin King really go that far? It seemed like such a stretch.

Then she remembered the note from her parents, her real parents, tucked into the back pocket of her jeans. Her body gave one final purge and she spit out the remains into the collective pile below her. Madeline let out a little moan, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sat back on her feet. She dug into the pocket and retrieved the folded piece of paper. It was still damp and delicate so she unfolded it carefully, making sure not to tear any edges.

The ink itself must have been some kind of magic. While the paper was fading away with the elements, the words were clear as day. She read the note agin, digging for clues that might be hidden in plain sight. They told her she needed to find the strength to complete the Labyrinth. But what she’d read in her safety book was nothing compared to what she’d been through already. Then again the girl in the book was only saving her brother. Madeline was being tested to save the kingdom from the Deserters. The tasks were ultimately miles away from each other.

Her parents knew Jareth would put her through the wringer. It really was all a test. Was she passing? If she had just curled into herself when that creature came, would she have failed? Would the Labyrinth have spit her back out into her dark world and curled up to die itself? Madeline looked down at the note again and read it one more time before folding it back up and replacing it in her pocket. Her hands still shook and when she pressed her palms to her face her skin was clammy and sweaty. All of her instincts screamed at her not to do it but Madeline turned to look at the creature anyway. She needed to drill into herself what she’d done, remember how it made her feel, so she’d never do it again. But the creature wasn’t there anymore. There was no evidence that anything had been lying at the base of the tree in a bloody heap. The wet spot on the bark was gone.

Madeline leaned forward and rifled her fingers through the dry leaves. Not a trace of blood. When she turned back around her pile of vomit was still there. It was getting harder and harder to tell what was real and what wasn’t. Did she murder that little creature or did she only think she did?

The heel of her hand pressed into her eye as she rubbed the tired out. Her body wanted to give up, lie down and take a nap. But her mind was on its second wind. It was clearer now, albeit no less pissed off at what it was going through. It may have all been one giant test but it was no less real to Madeline. Now she wasn’t just pushing through the Labyrinth for the survival of a people she never knew; she was now pushing through so she could hand Jareth his own ass for doing all of this to her. Yeah, somewhere deep in her cockles she understood why she had to be tested to high hell and back. But everywhere else in her was rip-fucking mad that he went to such extremes to do it. Almost like he got his kicks from it. Oh how she was eager to give him those kicks right back.

Madeline swiped her hands together and watched the dirt fall back to the forest floor. She pressed her hands to her knees, rocked back onto her heels and stood up. Then swiftly toppled into the tree. Yes, she was gung-ho to stick it to Jareth. He’d made her murder something. Maybe. But right now her body felt like it’d been murdered. Her faintly glowing skin gave off the illusion that she was fine but her muscles screamed with every step. She’d have to swallow the pain if she was going to make any kind of time in this maze from hell.

Slowly Madeline put one foot in front of the other, wincing with each step, and hobbled deeper into the woods, following the original direction she was headed before that creek sucked her into the nightmare that started this mess. She didn’t once look back.

**xXx**

Stala and Dorian watched out the cold stone window as the moon flared red and a burst of light erupted from within the Labyrinth. Dorian wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist, giving her a reassuring squeeze while Stala didn’t try to hide the tears as she wiped them away. Both glowed a little brighter against the dark backdrop of night.

The shine from the ground and the red from above blinked out and a smile curled up on Jareth’s lips.

“It’s about time,” he drawled, fingering and empty crystal. His voice slid vibrations around the room but the nobles didn’t move. “Now we wait.”


	12. The Girl with Two Heads

It felt like another person was banging around in her head, trying to get out. Madeline found herself talking to a voice that sounded just like her but had a personality that she reviled. It was the person that bashed that creature to death, the one that went off about rank and file, the one that demanded all knew who she was, daughter of Stala and Dorian of the Fey, heiress to the kingdom, intended to Jareth, the Goblin King. Saving grace of both their worlds. Maiae. Madeline wanted to beat herself about the head and scream for it to shut up.

“I thought I was Maiae,” Madeline said as she stepped around a cluster of Jareth-looking stones. “Me. Like this.”

I am you, you rat. I am the you you need to be to survive.

“I survived this long being this me right here, Madeline with a different name. I was bitch-free until you came along.”

You need to accept me, Madeline. I was hidden for so long but finally you broke open and set me free. Don’t you remember?

She did remember. After the woods, the light, the death, something cracked open and another life came spilling out. A home she never knew, parents that were more than dreams, a life came flooding back. She was assertive and forthright, molded by her parents for her future. With him. Then the sadness came and her parents’ light, the light she now saw in her own skin, started to dim. The air became thicker, tensed, and then her mother and father were speaking to her, their words a babble she didn’t understand. Her mother laid her hand on Madeline’s head and her life began to fade. All her thoughts, her memories, her strength, coalesced into a pool of images before it slipped through a crack and was sealed inside her. The knowledge of who the people in front of her were began slipping away, replaced by the orphanage, a crystal pendant and a book.

Madeline pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead and sat on the nearest stone. When it complained and tried to buck her off Madeline merely jolted up and sat back down on the ground, as if petulant stones were normal. She was cooked, done. This Labyrinth needed to be over with. Maybe now that she’d gone insane and fractured into two people Jareth would let up.

Your hopes are far too high. And you know very well you’re not insane.

“Do I?”

“Do you what?” the rock grumbled, its voice as gravely as the ground.

Its mouth was a cluster of cracks off to the side.

“Not you,” Madeline said, unphased by the talking rock. “I have someone taking up space in my head and they won’t shut up.”

“Hmmm,” the rock said. “That is a problem. Perhaps you can take my brother here and bash it out.”

The rock wiggled over to her left and nudged a smaller rock, definitely hand-sized. It sputtered to life, kicking up dirt and small stones with it and grumbled in a series of bass thumps to its sibling.

“I’m going to pass on that.”

“All the same,” the rock said. “He prefers not to get blood on him.”

“His lucky day, then.”

“Indeed.”

The rock settled back to the ground and fell silent, becoming just a rock again until someone else tried to sit on it.

I am you, Madeline. I am you that’s missing.

“I like me—”

Do you? You who was kicked around your whole known life? You who was abandoned? You who never stood up for herself until that moment when everything shattered?

“I don’t—”

-a wicked woman, is that it?

Madeline nodded and she hoped, just a little, that she’d rattle around the Maiae in her head. At that thought she could actually feel the phantom smile.

That was our breaking point, Madeline. That’s we who hang from the edge. Do you really think that you are capable of that savagery all the time?

“I don’t want to be capable of it at all.”

Madeline brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, anchoring her to herself.

Listen to me. You cannot be a meek little girl and stand next to the king. Our marriage alone is not what will save this world from the darkness closing in on it. You must do what you need to do, what is required of you as a queen. That is far different from liking it. From reveling in it. That will just turn you into the darkness you’re trying to fight.

“I don’t know if I can.”

A caw sounded overhead and Madeline looked up to see something huge and black dotting the sky. It reminded her of the vulture-looking thing outside the Labyrinth walls.

You must. You must accept Maiae. It is the only way everyone survives. Now you must move. That is not a friendly sight overhead. Go.

Madeline scrambled up, caught sight of the castle and walked in its direction.

“How do you know about the things here? You’ve been locked in my head for eleven years.”

I have been kept separate from you, yes, but I’ve played at the borders to both worlds. I’m a means to make you not so blind when you actually awaken. I kept making sure you never grew out of the fantasies.

“The dreams?”

Were not my doing. I was merely the conduit to which the king was alerted to your needing a reminder.

“You-you spoke to him?”

Madeline brushed some shimmering leaves out of the way, barely paying attention to her route but she had a feeling Maiae was helping to guide her. There was a chuckle in her head and it made her smile by association.

Hardly. As I said, I was a conduit. A filter. A crystal crashing to the floor or a goblin muttering madness was a sign I was poking too far in. The king would do what he saw fit. The veil would shatter if I did more than poke.

“And you couldn’t come the other way, to me, on your own.” Madeline felt her head shake without actually moving it. “You were in limbo.”

If you wish. Accept me and you shall see it all, unpleasant as it was at times.

More horror, more unpleasantness. She didn’t think she could take anymore. Something landed directly in front of her and the noise alone drew her back. When she looked at the fluttering blackness before her, really looked, she saw the bird flying overhead, its wing span large enough to wrap her up. On the ground it was enough to swallow her whole. It resembled her friend from the outside but this thing’s claws, caked in gore from its meals, its eyes the red of the moon from before, clashed against her memory of the vulture-thing from earlier. Was it the same?

Yes. Perverted. The Dissenters got to it.

Madeline opened her mouth to speak but was immediately silenced with a curt hush.

Just listen. The Labyrinth has far more protection with you in it. The king made sure of it. But these get through. Minor rebels, disposable soldiers, can be slipped inside. You must fight. As a queen you cannot always be rescued.

Madeline tried to say something but Maiae silenced her again.

I am the memory of this life and I have some knowledge of the magic in you. That is the only way to get through this.

The demented vulture cawed at her when she put out her hands, as if to soothe it. The sound was like scraping a fork against a plate and Madeline couldn’t stifle a shudder.

You must compose yourself far better than that.

Lips pursed against the nagging voice in her head. Madeline straightened her shoulders and pulled herself up, bringing her hands back to her sides. She lifted her nose up, stuck her chin out and said, “Go,” as surely as she could.

A snort echoed in her head and Madeline bit her tongue against the eye roll she so desperately wanted to do.

That will absolutely not do. I’m surprised it hasn’t attacked by now.

Was her goal not to make herself look crazy in front of this screwed up bird? Was that why she wasn’t just talking to herself?

Yes.

Madeline fumed at the lack of privacy in her own mind, taking a deep, loud breath through her nose. She had to prove to Maiae that she could do this on her own. She didn’t need to be rescued and she didn’t need to merge with an errant personality to get the task done.

This task. I am your light, Madeline. You are not who you need to be without it. You have no hope without it.

Her skin tingled with an energy that she was just now noticing. A light shimmered just beneath its surface, giving her hands and arms a radiance she didn’t have when she first met this creature, when it was something other than polluted. Her presence sent a subtle glow onto it, a hint of light that made it wince ever so slightly. She was changing; there was no doubt about that. But how much of herself would she lose in the process? How much was she willing to give up?

When you grow from child to adult what do you lose? And what do you gain? You mustn’t think you’re forfeiting who you are but simply growing up.

Except most kids, or Madeline at least thought, didn’t have to contend with their adult selves in their heads. They didn’t have drawn out conversations with themselves on who they are as they grew.

No. But they neither had a piece of themselves removed and stored away. You’ve unlocked a trunk filled with your history and you’re finding out who you are. It doesn’t change who you are now. It just alters the course of who you’ll become.

The vulture hacked, gagging as it tried to dislodge something. It made thrusts with its head, retching up whatever it was trying to. With one last resounding hack a blob of black bile came rocketing out and landed just at the toes of Madeline’s shoes. Almost immediately the grass and dead leaves underneath started to sizzle and curls of smoke carrying the stench of burnt up to her nose made her step back. The putrid mucus burned through the forest floor quickly, gouging itself into the ground. The first time it spit at her it was just a partially digested animal carcass. She’d rather go back to that.

Now can we please take care of this thing? I’m bored with it.

If its spit could burn the ground like acid what else could it do? What did the Dissenters do to it? It cawed again and flapped its sail-like wings, sending a gust whipping through Madeline’s hair. She could do this. Just point and shoot, right?

No. I’m getting tired of your inability to listen, Madeline. You need me. Accept me and we can be done with this thing. Quickly.

Accept. Accept. And how the hell was she supposed to do that?

“Okay, let’s do it,” Madeline said and thrust out her hands.

The vulture didn’t so much as flinch.

At this point I’m hedging my bets for that ghastly bird. Stop resisting me. That’s it. Let me all the way in.

She didn’t think she was resisting anything. Apparently she was wrong. Except now didn’t seem like the best time to lower her defenses. Except it was do that or get torn apart by the black razor claws now digging into the ground as the thing edged closer. Okay. Just let her in. Let Maiae in.

Madeline dropped her arms to her sides, her palms turning out to open up. She inhaled deeply through her nose and found herself straightening out. A settle came over her body, her shoulders, her torso, traveling down to her feet to anchor her to the ground. It was as if her veins were opening up to the shot she was about to get. Madeline gasped as her mind opened, as if a door was just thrown open in her forehead and knowledge marched its way in.

Good girl.

Maiae smiled and Madeline could feel the pull on her lips, the corners pulling up. ‘Girl’ was an echo in her mind as the presence taking up space of its own in her head thread its way into her brain, melted into her soul. Madeline could feel herself grow bigger, fuller. The barricades around her seventh year were moved and all of a sudden memories as clear as day flooded the other side of the curtain. They were dreams made real as Maiae blended with her.

A heat pulsed through her veins with every beat of her heart and with each beat the world grew brighter. The glow was back in her skin, a radiating light that made the vulture creature squeal and step back. A distinctly Maiae thought crawled into her mind except it was in Madeline’s voice: “save the creature.” There was no cuddling involved in this saving and Maiae no longer left like a separate entity. This thought was coming from within Madeline. At her deepest core she knew what she needed to do, Maiae knew what she needed to do but it may very well kill this creature.

She inhaled deeply, getting faint whiffs of decaying leaves and earth mixed with burnt gore from the creature’s bile. She took this in and her light, her radiance, glowed brighter. It pulsed out of her as it worked, purifying the death and decay as it reached out to the vulture from the tips of Madeline’s fingers.

The creature sank back, its eyes fluttering against Madeline’s brightness, the red a shock against its darkness. Burning feathers coiled around Madeline’s nose as wisps of smoke curled up from the vulture’s body. Then it started to wail as its darkness, its Dissenting taint, was burned out of it. The red of its eyes dripped down its face in rivulets, leaving behind the black that Madeline remembered seeing when she first saw it. Clumps of wing dropped to the ground in fizzling lumps as its wing span shrank to something less formidable than an airborne sail. Its razor-like claws receded back into its feet, pushing and cracking at the skin as they forced their way back in.

Through the shrieks of pain Madeline watched the vulture transform back into something recognizable, less threatening, more of the Labyrinth than something perverted and unnatural. With every distortion of bone and molting feather Madeline could feel the energy leech out of her, forcing its way into this creature, using her light to cleanse it. Was this how they would win the war against the Dissenters? She wouldn’t survive it if that was the case.

It was a gut feeling she had more than a disembodied voice telling her no, this wasn’t the way to win the war. It was just an exercise, a way for Madeline, Maiae, to stretch out her light stored for so long in the recesses of her mind.

The gurgling cries of the vulture were silenced and Madeline, Maiae, stopped putting out effort and the light faded immediately, withdrawing back into her to rest and recharge. The luminescence on her skin was brighter, a glow that was noticeable on first glance instead of something caught with the corner of her eye. She stepped toward the blackened, aged leather-looking creature collapsed on the ground and her heart broke with its stillness. Maiae dropped to her knees and rested a hand on the vulture’s body, stroked its surprisingly soft feathers. Tears prickled at her eyes and Maiae bit her lip against it. A creature of her world was lost but it wouldn’t do anyone any good for her to crumble over this loss. Instead she folded the pain into herself and slotted it into the need for revenge that would surely come later when the real battle against the Dissenters began.

Her knees cracked as she stood and she flexed her muscles, bending and twisting her joints as if feeling them for the first time. In a sense she was. Madeline had let Maiae in and now, as one, they were testing out the body Madeline formed for them. It felt like a good fit except it was lonely and still a little sad in her mind. Not to worry. Soon there won’t be room enough for those old world feelings.

Maiae looked around and spotted Jareth’s castle in the distance, its form hovering ever closer. It won’t be long now. She knew, at that moment, Jareth was watching her through one of his crystals. She could feel his eyes upon her, assessing her. Judging her. Her parents were there too, waiting. Now, though, her eyes were only for Jareth.

Maiae turned to the castle, her stance wide, her chin high, and looked directly into the spec of window she somehow knew from Maiae’s stored knowledge belonged to Jareth’s throne room, and glared. Her jaw clenched and she made fists at her sides. Madeline’s pain and frustration and Labyrinthine torture mixed with Maiae’s being to form a perfect storm of contempt and drive. She would complete this Labyrinth and be his queen. She had no doubt about that. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t tear him a new asshole for making her go through all this shit to do it.

The corner of her mouth quirked up into a sinister smirk, something hidden deep within Madeline and pulled up by Maiae. This was going to be so good.

“I’m coming for you, you son of a bitch.”

**xXx**

Jareth watched the girl’s lip twitch into a seductive sneer and his own jester’s smile split his face. He heard the words in a voice that was no longer lonely, broken. Madeline’s on a face that shown with the proper Fey light and he knew all would be fine. Their worrying was over.

He looked up to find Dorian and Stala looking at him expectantly, waiting for his word. At his jeering smile their bodies visibly slackened and a collectively held breath was released.

The bubble popped on his finger as he stood up from the throne.

“Maiae is coming.”

Goblins started scrambling and Jareth looked to the clock ticking on the wall. Down to the wire, he saw, as the hand struck twelve. Leave it to a princess to make an entrance.


	13. When the Clock Strikes 13 . . .

No. This certainly wasn’t right. Maiae had walked too far unimpeded. Sure, the Labyrinth served its purpose. Maiae had finally returned. But the Goblin King liked to play. Just getting back into Maiae wasn’t enough for the formerly broken girl. It was a laughable thought to think Jareth would just let her coast the rest of the way to the castle. In fact, she chuckled at that. No. Something was coming. Or waiting. There was one good test left. She could feel it in her bones.

She wished she had a fresh set of clothes to tackle it in, whatever it was. There was so much grime and salt and crusted who-knew-what embedded into the fibers of her clothes she could take them off and they’d stand on their own while keeping her shape. It wouldn’t even surprise her if they started walking too. The rough texture on her skin made it crawl and pinch as the little hairs on her arms caught the dirt. Despite how gross she felt she hoped she stank. She wanted to rub herself all over Jareth when she saw him and watch him squirm.

The forest was getting thicker and more difficult to navigate. The canopy had closed in over her. When she looked up all she could see were leaves barely discernible as such in the shadowed darkness overhead. She didn’t have enough hands to push all of the wayward branches out of the way and there was hardly stepping over tree roots without coming down on stones. What were only smatterings of copses around her converged into one giant, erratic hedgerow that required her to push through with force. Sweat dripped down her face and neck and her shirt clung to her skin. At least the moisture took the hard, crusted edges off. She just had to try and not think about what was now sticking to her skin.

She turned to look behind her, maybe see a path she missed, but the flora had closed in on her, as if it’d been there, dense and impassable, all along. Maiae grit her teeth and turned back around, glaring into the leaves around her. Above her and all around was nothing but thick, overgrown hedge and she’d had enough of it.

“Enough, Jareth. Get on with it. Unless you plan to turn me into a gardener . . .”

A chime sounded, ringing all around her. It wasn’t an unpleasant noise and it didn’t surprise her but her heart did start beating faster. It was a single chime, sounding the half hour. It was 12:30. Whatever was about to happen would need to involve speed on top of everything else.

When the ring faded to nothing more than the leaves rustling in the light breeze everything was still the same. Maiae’s world was still the same but filled with shrubbery. So she pushed forward, step by laborious step, shoving her way through nature, waiting for the damn shoe to drop.

And it dropped with a clatter.

When she reached to move the next layer of shrubs out of her way the world opened up in front of her as if there weren’t anything but that opening. Maiae stood and looked through the hole she made, staring at the desolate expanse in front of her. The world was a dusty brown, dust devils spun and swirled in the wind. The sky was a blue-tinted brown, choked by wind-swept dirt. Her heart beat faster and the part of her that was Madeline was frozen to the spot. Being so out in the open and exposed was horrifying. Not knowing what was coming? It made her hands shake just to think about it. She could hear the leaves closest to her ears shiver against each other.

But the rest of her that was Maiae knew this was it. It was a test, nothing more. She’d come this far already. Jareth wouldn’t let her die. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t see her suffer. And she would gladly shove that right back down his throat.

Another moment’s pause and Maiae took a tentative step forward, pushing herself out into the desolate plain, out from the relative safety of the expansive shrub. A chill rippled through her body but it had nothing to do with the temperature. The heat was dry but bordering on oppressive. With all the grit in the air breathing quickly became uncomfortable and her eyes stung.

There was nothing out in front of her except the plain itself, the horizon blending brown to smudge the sky and the earth together. Nothing grew here. Nothing moved except the dirt in the wind. There wasn’t even anything dead. No plant husks or skeletons to show that the place did once hold life. She might as well have been on the moon.

She stepped out of the shrub entirely, felt the stiff little leaves cling to her soiled clothes as she pulled away. She looked behind her, her Madeline self expecting the shrub wall to still be there. Her Maiae self wasn’t surprised when it too was gone and nothing but dead land was left in its place. Maiae squinted against the gusting wind, trying to keep the dirt out of her eyes, but she could still feel them getting irritated. She rubbed at her face and felt the grit slide across her skin.

It probably didn’t matter whether she picked a direction and started walking or stayed where she was. Whatever was coming would find her. Still, despite how weary her body felt Maiae wanted to move. She wanted to be ready. She spun on her toe in a single rotation, stepped down and started walking.

There was no telling how far she walked. She didn’t have a starting point to orient her and her feet didn’t leave prints in the shifting dust. Or they were covered over too quickly to tell. Shapes formed in the brown haze and Maiae saw them almost immediately. She slowed her pace and stepped carefully, not knowing whether the creatures, whatever they were, knew she was there. Hard lines formed the closer she got and the animals took the shape of horses. Wild ones, perhaps. It took Maiae a moment longer to realize what they actually were. Horns on horses were usually not things someone looked for.

But Maiae saw them and drew herself up short. Unicorns. Three of them. Her heart fluttered. It’d been so long since she’d last seen them. They were the pride of the fey, deadly as they were beautiful and encompassing everything magical about the world they lived in. Legend had it that they were the source of the magic in the world. It’s why they were to protected, and capable of protecting themselves. Who knew if it was true or more of a fairy tale hope told to children at bedtime. But they were here, in this dead land instead of green pastures. It made her gut churn. Something wasn’t right.

Every step brought her closer to the unicorns and further from the Goblin King. The ticking thirteen-hour clock, her quest, her parents waiting for her, all faded the closer she got to the creatures. At first her eyes didn’t want to see the aberrations marring their bodies. Her mind automatically moved the images away, hoping she would forget, but the deluge was too much. She couldn’t forget fast enough and soon it was all she could see.

What had happened to the vulture was a horrific act against nature. What was done to the unicorns was an abomination that would make the heavens shatter. Their eyes were an oozing, viscous, blood red that dripped down their faces, congealing in a clotted mess under each eye like a dog in need of a bath. Their snouts were patterned in raw, red flesh that bubbled with sickly green pus. Their mouths were blackened, teeth and tongue hardly discernible from each other. Their ears were chopped and battered, as if caught in razored wire and ripped, piece by piece, from their heads. Their bodies, though, those were the worst.

A memory from Madeline’s past crawled to the forefront of Maiae’s mind, bringing to life the thought of shambling walking dead, rotted through to reveal bones and sinew and organs that had no business showing through. Those creatures, Maiae thought, were awful. But the unicorns . . . it made her gorge rise. Flesh hung in strips from their bodies and jerked about in the gusts. Dust and dirt clung to the raw wounds and the animals nearly danced with pain. Ribs pushed their way out but not in an underfed way. The peeled-back flesh revealed muscle and bone wet with blood and Maiae’s stomach roiled. In one of the unicorns she could see its heart behind the bones and she doubled over. All that come out were dry heaves but they were loud enough to attract the monsters’ attention.

Their threadbare tails stopped swishing and they stopped milling about as if they were normal unicorns. Maiae stood up straight and watched them watch her. All six eyes were staring her down. She could feel the heat of their scorched breath on her skin and she watched their muscles ripple under their dirtied coats. Some muscle danced over the bone and out of the torn away holes in the animals. She had to keep herself from taking a deep breath and inhaling a mouthful of dirt.

It was clear what she had to do. Like with the vulture the unicorns needed to be purged of the Dissenter taint, just with one major difference: the unicorns couldn’t die. Legend or not Maiae wasn’t about to take that chance. Judging by the landscape around her Jareth was playing on it. The unicorn magic is seemingly dead. So must be the land around it.

Shit. How the hell was she going to do this? Rewind. How the hell was she going to do this and not get mauled by rabid unicorns? Madeline’s panic started to bubble up in her chest but Maiae tapped it down. No matter how much her brain wanted to scream, no matter how much her heart broke for the perverted unicorns, this was all just a test. It wasn’t real.

A unicorn charged, its ragged lips flapping over its blackened teeth, bloodied foam building at the corners of its mouth. Maiae dodged but not before the unicorn could edge in a shoulder. It slammed into her arm and sent her spinning, toppling her to the ground. Her shoulder throbbed and her arm went momentarily numb before pins and needles took over. Yeah, it wasn’t real but holy shit did that hurt.

A second unicorn was snorting and tapping at the ground with its hoof, readying itself for round two as its partner trotted back around to its side. It wasn’t the charging that scared her. It was the way they were attacking, plotting, picking at her one by one as if they had some higher level of thinking. If this was a mimic of what the Dissenters could really do then Maiae, for a second, felt the hope drain from her. Then she plugged it up, pulled herself together and refocused. Purge the dirt out of these guys.

Unicorn number two was charging at her. Maiae tapped into her light and let it flow. The world around her cleared, as if the air wasn’t choked with dust, and the ravaged unicorn faltered. Its eyes started to weep the goopy red of the taint, the whites peeking through. But she couldn’t sear it out. She couldn’t kill it.

Within the light pulsed a radiance not coming from her. Within the sick of the creature was its own magic, buried under Dissenter destruction. She reached for it with her light and felt the two connect. If she wasn’t already on the ground she would have dropped. Maiae could feel her energy depleting. Her light wrapped a protective shell around the unicorn magic and burned out the darkness.

The unicorn reared and whinnied, bucking off an imaginary rider as its flesh knit back together. Ever in the elegance of the light she steed’s coat shined like new. It bayed, showing its pink tongue and white teeth. It kicked again, gathering the strength it needed to throw off the last remnants of the Dissenters.

Maiae let the light fade and collapsed onto her back, heaving in lungfuls of filthy air and coughing. Its brightness met her eyes even before she could lift her head up enough to see. The unicorn was pristine, a stark contrast to its two walking dead companions. Then Maiae noticed the sky. It was bluer. Under her, brushing her fingers, were blades of grass scattered in the compacted dirt. Out past the horses the horizon had a clear line, if not still muddled by dirt. It was working.

She heard the clomping hooves before she saw the charging unicorn but she was at least able to scramble to her feet. She wasn’t quick enough to dodge it as the unicorn lowered its head and rammed into her. Neither in her own head nor in Madeline’s was there any thought of what it would feel like to get stabbed. Still, it’s not what she thought. There was no feeling at first, until warmth flowed from the hole in her stomach, trailing down her body and leaving her getting colder. Then the pain hit as the unicorn jerked its head to try and dislodge its horn. Maiae cried out and the creature stopped moving.

With its weeping blood eyes it looked up at her and the red ran down its face as tears streamed down Maiae’s cheeks. In that moment the unicorn was aware as the whites of its eyes cleared and its pupils focused. It knew what it had done and Maiae placed her palm on its cheek. It dropped its front legs, all the while keeping its eyes on her, and allowed her to put her knees down.

Her light flared bright and Maiae took a jagged breath. She was so cold but as the looked at the unicorn, watched it be as gentle as it could be with her, her heart flared with heat.

“This was not your fault,” she whispered to it as it slowly slid its horn from her stomach.

Maiae coughed and her mouth filled with a metallic taste. She let the blood drip from the corners of her mouth. Her hand dropped to her side and landed with a soft thump in a pad of grass. She slowly blinked and the sky overhead hardly had any brown left in it. Hoof beats thundered into her back through the ground and she knew it had to be the last rogue unicorn trying to finish the job. She just didn’t have the strength to lift herself up and see it kill her.

Spindly legs walked up on either side of her and Maiae looked up at the unicorns taking a stand next to her, ready to defend her. Maiae closed her eyes and braced herself, however little she could, for the lightning strike about to hit. Instead she saw her unicorns lower themselves and lunge. The charging horse wailed and hooves danced around her but the thought of getting trampled never crossed her mind. The unicorns wouldn’t allow it. They grunted and snorted as they wrangled in their third and then they fanned out, leveraging themselves so they could lower their wayward partner’s head to hers.

Maiae turned her head. It was all she could so but she didn’t have to go far. Her forehead touched the face of the creature. From the sound of the squelch it was a part of it missing protective flesh. She didn’t care. Instead she nuzzled into it. It struggled against its captors, their horns embedded deeply, Maiae knew. But as soon as her light flared it calmed. She was surprised how bright it was for how dark and cold she felt. She closed her eyes and felt it heal, felt the other two walk away to let their partner mend, felt the unicorn stand up and tap a hoof into the grass.

Grass tickled her neck as the three unicorns, restored to their glory and purged of the darkness that corrupted them, stood over her. The crystal blue sky made their coats even whiter as they stood against it. She smiled as she closed her eyes and felt herself disconnect from her body. She became weightless and even in the dark behind her eyelids everything was bright as day. Maiae expected to lose all thought, fade out, until she had the urge to open her eyes.

When she did the ground underneath her was hard and jagged. It took a second for her vision to come back into focus but when it finally did she realized she was looking out at a village, not up at the sky. Maiae jerked into a sitting position, wincing against the inevitable pain of her injuries but they were ghosts. She looked down to see a bloodied hole in her shirt and her whole front soaked through but when she lifted it up her stomach was smooth. No ache in her shoulder either.

She craned her head around and took in the village in front of her, quiet except for some wayward chickens, the stone steps she was currently sitting on, and the spired castle looming over her head. A smile crawled across her face and Maiae began to laugh, a sort of maniacal laughter of accomplishment that probably would have scared anyone around her but she was alone. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she rubbed her eyes while muttering ‘thank you’ over and over again. She wanted to kiss something. And then immediately break its face.

Jareth was in there, waiting. She finished her final test, assuming she’d passed since the unicorns survived her fey exorcisms, and he dropped her on his front stoop. How kind. A clock started to chime, echoing over the village and ringing in her ears. This was the end. Maiae scrambled up, nearly slipping on the smooth stairs, and stalked up them. She pictured the charging unicorn and wished she had a horn.

Her gut led her up to where she felt Jareth’s throne room to be. Her rage didn’t allow her to see anything around her. She took no notice of the greater castle, its awe and grandeur. Maiae climbed stairs and saw nothing until walking into a room with a shimmering, statuesque individual in it waiting smugly for her. She paused in the doorway as he uncrossed his arms and turned his closed-mouth smile into a full-toothed grin.

“Maiae,” he said. “Welcome home.”

Her clothes itched, caked in salt water and dirt and blood and shame and embarrassment. She wanted them off. She wanted a shower. Instead she snarled at the glittering man, stomped her way over to him and threw her fist at his face.


	14. I Give You Your Dreams

Jareth was on the other side of the throne room, well away from Maiae’s flying fist, before it even came close to hitting the air where his face once was. Maiae spun with the momentum and wobbled before her feet steadied. For a second she was confused, the man having just been standing there and now he was gone. But with a swivel she found him again and her tunnel vision narrowed back in. There was nothing else that existed in this world nor any other except that self-satisfied smirk that she wanted to knock right off his face.

With a growl she stomped her way to the other side of the throne room, not noticing the two people tentatively reaching for her but knowing better than to get in the way of her wrath. With a blink the Goblin King was gone and calling to her from where she first threw her fist.

“I can do this all day, you know.”

Maiae reared up like a horse about to buck. Her eyes went wide before narrowing into slits as she slowly turned to face her nemesis. This . . . this . . . MAN who just raked her over the coals while he sat around and watched. She SUFFERED, mentally, physically, spiritually. She was pretty sure she died on that last test but one never knew with the Labyrinth. This could all be just a dream and any second she would wake up in her shithole apartment after having huffed too much black mold from the bathroom. Until then her mission was to end the Goblin King.

“Oh I have no doubt you could. Comfortable on your throne. Warm. DRY.” With every step her voice got louder. “I’m almost positive I had a mental breakdown out there and I think, I THINK, I may just be resurrected from the dead. Just pull a string and poof! Puppet Maiae enters another scene. I’m sure it was a ball. FOR YOU!”

She witnessed Jareth roll his mismatched eyes and made to rear up at him again until two reluctant people sidled up to her and attempted to talk her off the ledge.

“Darling, wait,” Stala said as she put her hand on her daughter’s arm, giving no mind to the plastered gunk on the sleeve. Maiae was wrenched from her building tirade and turned to the woman who was speaking so gently to her she almost didn’t comprehend it. “You’ve been through so much and not just in the Labyrinth. Please, let us help.”

Who was this woman talking to her as if she cared? What a foreign feeling, the love emanating from her. For a second Maiae and Madeline separated, one exploding with love and yearning and the other confused and suspicious. It saddened the separated Maiae that Madeline had missed so much of this. Then the second was over and the reborn Maiae had a sudden rush of emotion so overpowering it made her head throb. She had to force herself to keep from reeling away from these doting people and could only blink back at them.

“Maiae, please. Say something,” Dorian said as he apprehensively looked at his daughter, his hands worrying together.

Tears gleamed in their eyes and they both looked about ready to collapse. Maiae knew who they were but Madeline’s confusion and doubt was warring with Maiae’s stored memories. The look that twisted her face must have been frightening. At the very least off-putting.

“Are you my parents?”

They didn’t even need to nod. With the tears streaking down their cheeks and the grateful but hesitant smiles those said it all. Her parents. The people who took her memory, split her in two and kicked her into another world. The people responsible for the group homes, the foster homes, the shitty life growing up.

Maiae dug into her pocket and pulled out the note they’d written her, the one Jareth gave to her when she started on all this madness. It was little more than a degrading square of paper now. Its folds were sealed together, the writing no longer accessible thanks to ocean water and dirt. She just held it there, in her fingers, a slight quiver in the paper. She tried to form words but nothing got past her twitching lips. Everything she wanted to say, good and bad, was smashing into itself in her head.

Stala’s face crumbled and she dropped to her knees with a loud crack. Maiae flinched but her mother showed no signs of even feeling the hit. Instead she fell forward against Maiae’s legs. She had to flail her arms to keep her balance and Stala only held tighter. She nuzzled her face into the crusted denim, no care for what was caked there, and sobbed into the mess. Maiae had no idea what to do. She didn’t know where to put her hands, where to look. So she looked at her father. Dorian. The sadness dug lines into his face, creating channels for his tears to wend through. Instead of looking at her he kept his head bowed and placed a tender hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” Stala whispered to Maiae’s legs, a choked sob hitching the Rs. “My darling, please forgive me. Forgive me.”

Maiae couldn’t help the tears welling in her own eyes, didn’t stop them as they trailed down her cheeks. But she kept her eyes staring straight ahead, trying so hard to not look at the top of her shining mother’s head. Instead she focused on nothing.

“People are cruel. They were cruel to me. The best I got was indifference.” Her face screwed up as a montage of foster lives flickered through her mind. “Even the love I had, what you gave me, you took when you locked away Maiae and left me with the shell of Madeline. I had nothing.”

“If we had known . . .” her father started but choked on his words. It took him a second to compose himself. “We thought it was better than here with the Dissenters. They couldn’t get you there and your survival . . . so much depends on it to unite the kingdoms and stop this madness.”

“The greater good,” Maiae said, her voice a monotone, her eyes glazed. That’s what royalty did, right? It was never about them but what would come of the greater good. “Why couldn’t I keep my memories? Or myself? Why did you do . . . that to me?” She waved her hand in the air, indicating that unknown bit of magic that tore her in two.

Stala gathered herself up and stood to look her daughter in the eyes. Hers were red and raw, her cheeks blotchy and swollen with guilty tears. But still she glowed, a radiance that matched Maiae’s own. It was there regardless of mood or temperament. It was like a heartbeat, thudding constantly whether the person was happy or sad.

“If you had known everything that we took from you what would you have done?” Stala’s voice was watery, shaky. Her words were barely a whisper.

What would Maiae have done? Or Madeline? Would she have hoped to be rescued one day, taken back to her real home? Would it have given her the resolve to stand up a little straighter as she grew? To hold her head up a little higher? Or would she have folded in on herself? Gotten crushed under the overwhelming feeling of abandonment? Gotten lost in her own mind where her real world existed? More than a decade of building resentment or building hope? There was no way to answer that with any degree of certainty. There was only speculation and that would be based on nothing. So she remained quiet and watched Stala’s eyes flit back and forth, searching her daughter for an answer.

“Considering where we were leaving you,” Stala looked down at her feet, “we felt it would have been insult to injury to leave you with your real life intact. No matter what it would have just made it harder for you.”

“Maiae.” Maiae slowly turned from her mother to face her father, who’d remained largely quiet compared to his wife. Like her he glowed, radiated that fairy light like something ethereal. “You don’t need to process this all now. There’s work to be done but . . . this time is yours.”

Tentatively he reached for her hand slowly, as if she were an animal given to spooking easily. But she only watched him move, watched him reach for her hands, felt him wrap his fingers around hers. His grip was warm and dry, reassuring. The man radiated comfort and all of a sudden Maiae was exhausted. Utterly and completely annihilated. Her knees buckled and she fell into her father’s waiting arms, as if they’d been there all along.

His hands on her, his loving touch so willingly given and without even a question. Through her exhausted haze there was still energy enough for her eyes to water, for the coming tears to knot her throat and blur her vision even more than what it already was. More than escape, more than the Labyrinth and the Goblin King, more than friends, Maiae, Madeline, wanted to be touched, held. Loved. The life she knew was so empty of that one pure emotion that to feel it now, after everything she’d been through, was going to shake her to pieces.

That night in the museum, when Jareth came to her, held her, showed her more affection in those handful of minutes than she’d received in her remembered life, it was a too-short taste of her dreams. Now they were coming true. Maiae was falling into them.

As if she were weightless, Dorian, her father, whisked her off her feet, cradled her to his chest and took her away. His silk shirt caressed her cheek as she let her head fall to his shoulder. Her body bumped along as he carried her, to where she had no idea. The castle was barely a presence in her life at the moment. Half into a deepening sleep Maiae could barely feel her skin let alone anything else. She was vaguely aware of being gently placed onto something soft, a blanket being tucked into her hands, soft murmurings. She was aware of her eyelids pressed together, of hearing noise but nothing more discernible, before her awareness was left behind and a heavy, dreamless sleep took over.

**#**

Something was off. Madeline would sense it before she even opened her eyes. Her sleep had been restless and her dreams were just really freaking weird. She could only remember bits and pieces as it was. The further she floated out of sleep the fuzzier even those memories became. She dug the heel of her hand into her eye and stretched, groaning at the release stretching her muscles gave her. Something about unicorns nagged at her but Madeline shrugged it away.

That’s when it hit her: the bed. The blankets. Even the pillows. Like water over her skin the fabric was delicate, gentle. Expensive. This was not her home.

Her eyes snapped open and she bolted upright. Her breath hitched as she took in the room, clad in dark stone but still cozy. A fire sizzled in the fireplace, the bed she was on was fluffed to maximum capacity with down and fur. She peered over the edge of the bed and a fur rug lay ready and waiting for her feet.

In that moment her dreams came flooding back. Every bit of pain and anger slammed into her brain, radiated into her body and shook her muscles to hurting all over again. She was no longer Madeline but Maiae, split in half and hidden in another world only to be stitched back together again. Her parents, tear-stained faces and red eyes, filled her memory.

It felt like such a weak thing, happening only to corseted women in romance novels, but Maiae actually swooned. It felt nowhere near as dainty as it had always sounded. The room tilted and spun. Heat flooded her head, her ears rang and black stars burst in front of her eyes. She plopped back onto the pillows and covered her eyes with her hand and focused on her breathing. At that moment her world was a boat on a choppy sea and she really didn’t want to ruin all the white fluff around her. Not like there was anything in her stomach to come up but that didn’t stop it from grumbling and Maiae groaned. That didn’t help.

Skittering, like dog nails on hardwood, clattered into the room but Maiae couldn’t bear to move her hand just yet. The world still had a wobble and her eyes just couldn’t take it right then. So she listened as it scurried across the floor. By the clattering it placed something metal on a table next to her bed and skittered out of the room.

At first nothing changed. The wobble lessened, the world steadied and Maiae slowly removed her hand from her face. Before she could open her eyes the smell hit her like a slap to the face. The best slap she could ever get and one she would beg to have. All notions of a sick stomach fled out the window as she opened her eyes and took the sight of the breakfast at her side. Her mouth watered as she took in the smell of fried meat. Something that resembled thick-cut bacon and a small side of steak shared a plate with fried eggs, a buttered biscuit the size of both her fists, and a bowl of sliced strawberries swimming in cream. A teapot and an empty cup sat in the corner of the silver tray, accompanied by a bowl of sugar lumps and a small container of creamer.

There was no think, only do. Maiae tossed the blanket off her legs, swung them over the edge of the bed, and attacked the plate with gusto. She was vaguely aware of a cramp in her stomach and some small voice telling her to pace herself but she had no idea how hungry she was until she smelled that food. Sleep plus thirteen hard hours in the Labyrinth plus the last breakfast she ate before the last foster kicked her out and it’d easily been a day since she’d last seen food. She’ll pay for the gorging later as long as she got to taste all of that now.

“I’d highly recommend leaving something left. Namely the plate.”

With her teeth sunk into the biscuit and a fist around some fried meat Maiae scanned the room looking for the source of the voice that she was almost positive wasn’t in her head. When her gaze reached the far corner of the room the biscuit turned to chalk in her mouth and the meat felt like a slug. Woven into the shadows stood Jareth, his attire casual, uncaring to the point of being purposeful, as he cast her a wry smile.

Her teeth bit all the way through the biscuit and she placed what was in her hand on the plate. What clogged her mouth she tried to choke down her Saharan throat with many tears pushing at the corners of her eyes. The meat was a dropped casualty, landing half in the teacup. Maiae didn’t notice. She just grabbed a fork and stood.

Jareth’s eyes glimmered, dared her even, to step toward him with cutlery in hand. And she did. Biscuit crumbs tracked down her throat and she really wanted some milk but she also wanted to stab Jareth in the thigh with her three-pronged instrument. She noticed that his face was unblemished, lacking any black and/or bluish coloring that her fist desperately wanted to cause the night before. She needed to fix that. Another use for the fork.

His smile turned patronizing and he cocked his head as if speaking to an impudent child. “Now what do you expect to do with that?”

At first she didn’t notice but it only took a second for Maiae to realize that something was off about the fork. When she looked down it was obvious what. Instead of a fork she held a single white feather.

A frustrated screech tore out of her throat and she let go of the feather. She didn’t see it twist and writhe and make its way to the window where it slid through a shutter slat and drifted into the morning.

“You have some nerve just popping up in here uninvited—”

“Well it is my castle, after all.”

“Spying on me as I just woke up—”

“You’ve been up for a while . . .”

“Humiliating me and embarrassing me—”

“In front of all these people . . .”

“And after yesterday with that god forsaken Labyrinth—”

“Your parents’ idea, actually . . .”

“I should destroy you.”

“With a fork.”

Maiae looked at her empty hands and screeched again. This was impossible. He was impossible. She wanted to strangle him and hug him and slap him and kiss him and she was having some very conflicting emotions at the moment and it was getting awfully hot in the room and was that a headache she could feel throbbing behind her eyes?

With arms still crossed over his chest he pushed himself away from the wall and meandered closer to her. Maiae kept her angry face on, her jaw clenched, her frown firmly in place. But in reality she wanted to melt. This was her dream, come at such a gross price and there was no way she would just fall into his arms all willy nilly. He had to earn that privilege.

“I know this has been trying for you—”

“TRYING? That’s the understatement of the century.”

Pain still echoed across her body but like an echo it faded with each pulse of her heart, little by little. Now that her brain stopped running she didn’t feel nearly as damaged as she did when she first fell into that bed. Or, more accurately, the last time she remembered, period.

Jareth raised a hand to halt her words. Maiae started to protest the very notion of silencing her with a hand but a look, an impatient side-eyed look kept her words from reaching her tongue. Instead she stood there and stewed.

“This transition is difficult, yes. But I must remind you of your duties. Rest. Regain your strength. But Maiae, I’d advise you to not dawdle. No one in this kingdom has the patience for that. The Dissenters won’t wait for a well-rested recovery from you.”

Maiae gaped like a land-thrown fish. He was chastising her. Of all the shit he put her through he was telling her to get over it and move on. She was too dumbfounded to even scoff.

He took a step closer and brushed her cheek with his finger. Musk and sweet lingered with his touch and Maiae desperately wanted to lean into the caress but she stood firm. She would not let her knees go weak now.

“I’ve finally given you your dreams.”

Like a record screeching along a needle the sensual calm washing over her came to a crashing halt. He spoke about her dreams as if he had any idea. As if he had any right. As he watched from his throne while she got tossed around like a piece of trash in a world she didn’t belong in. He knew nothing of her dreams.

She slapped his hand down and let the rage simmer into her eyes. The muscles in her jaw screamed as she clenched, her teeth grinding under the pressure. At first a smile danced across his mouth at her swat of defiance but as Jareth stared into the face of the woman who was to become his queen the cold glare of her eyes started to freeze him and his smile drifted slowly away. Without a hint of warning Maiae thrust her hands out and shoved him in the chest, taking him by surprise and nearly knocking him off his feet. There was no smile anywhere near his eyes now and the look he now gave her fought for frost.

“Dreams?” It was hard for Maiae to keep her voice in control. She could feel the shriek creeping up but she tried to keep it in check. “You know nothing of dreams.”

Jareth pulled up to his full height, a near half a foot taller than Maiae, and stepped into her space but she didn’t falter.

“I know everything of dreams!” His voice had risen but he stood firm. The girl of Madeline was coming out of this Maiae and it was starting to annoy him.

“You know everything of fantasy,” she returned through gritted teeth. “They are not the same. They never were, not for me.”

“Without me and my fantasies you would have suffered—”

Maiae laughed. At first it was one loud, solid ha! And then it rolled into belly laughs that could be defined as guffaws. This man was hilarious.

“You think what you put in my head at night saved me when I was awake?” She was still laughing but it was starting to fizzle out. “Your fairy tales of the Goblin King coming to rescue the girl, they saved me, did they?” The laughter was gone and now Maiae was all teeth. “I didn’t SUFFER?”

“I didn’t say—”

The slap came with its own comic book word burst of action. SLAP! Maiae didn’t even feel it. Her palm didn’t sting. Jareth’s cheek rang with it, his neck jerked with the force of the hit. His hair in his eyes, stuck to his lips. He stayed bent that way, face away from her. He had to stay that way, at least for that second. And it had nothing to do with her feelings. No. No matter how much, in that moment, Jareth reminded himself that Maiae was still recovering, he couldn’t help but want to throttle her. Shake her. Slap her back. Force her to see the bigger picture. But that would solve nothing and the last thing he wanted to do was strike his future queen. Regardless of his own power her parents would reduce him to a pile of ashes. Plus something, somewhere deep in his core, made it feel . . . wrong.

“You know nothing of what I’ve been through. Not a damn thing. Don’t pretend your dream wishes were favors. Don’t pretend to be a hero.” Maiae sneered and stepped closer to him, his head still turned to the side but his cheek showing no sign of a handprint on the skin. “You helped me sleep at night. Thanks so much. Where were you the rest of the time?”

It was just the opening he needed. With the speed of a bolt of lightning Jareth turned and clamped onto Maiae’s arm. Before she could even register the shock Jareth was dragging her toward the overlarge window carved into the stone. With a wave of his hand the shutters flew open and morning sun flooded the room. Maiae flinched against the brightness, momentarily forgetting Jareth’s rough handling and their fight.

The world was a blinding white light for a sheer second before her eyes adjusted and the Labyrinth opened up before her. Hedge mazes and stone mazes, the forest and the ocean. Far out in the distance Maiae saw the hill she started on, little more than a speck from where she stood. To either side of the puzzling expanse was uncharted territory for her. Another forest lay off to the left, filling the horizon. To her right the goblin village and dark forest she stumbled through gradually faded into scrub and dirt. Far out on that horizon red buttes loomed against the sky but the land was a waste, hazed in dirt that never seemed to settle from out of the air. Maiae wondered if there were unicorns out there.

When her senses finally came back she yanked her arm and it slid out of the Goblin King’s grip. The slip of his fingers burned against her flesh but he dropped his hand, no intention of keeping hold of her. Then he pointed out the window, his eyes alight with anger but rimmed in exhaustion. Maiae allowed herself to really look at him and for once the glamour wasn’t there. Bags fell heavy under his eyes and spider webs of lines crinkled out from the corners. Even the corners of his mouth turned down just slightly, making him look almost sad.

“That is where I was the rest of the time I wasn’t giving you sweet dreams in your horrible life. Defending the Fey and Goblin kingdoms from Dissenters, making sure it was at least safe for you to come back so we could eradicate them once and for all.” Jareth sagged and sighed heavily. He waved and looked like he wanted to rest himself against the window. Instead he just placed his fingers on the ledge. “It’s been more difficult these last few years. We’ve lost nearly as many as we can keep on the line and it’s still not enough. They die in droves and it’s all I can do to keep them all from deserting.”

Maiae was at a loss for words. She reached a hand out, close to his shoulder, but jerked her arm back, unsure of the reception she’d get. What could she say to him? He didn’t seem to be fishing for comfort, or would even try that. He just looked . . . tired. Her life sucked. Most of it. But this sucked more, this war. As much as she wanted to rant and rave about what she’d been through she just couldn’t compare it to the likes of this. All the death, the desertion, the Dissenters corrupting the kingdoms bit by bit. A world was being destroyed and it was all Jareth and her parents could do to keep the end from closing in until their daughter could come back, unite the kingdoms and end the strife once and for all.

No pressure.

Maiae nearly reeled. Unlike the Goblin King she allowed herself to fall into the wall and for it to prop her up. This world would have defeated her without her ever having a chance. Holding the line took all of Stala and Dorian’s focus. Knowing their daughter was out of enemy reach allowed them to keep their attention on winning. Had she been here, in her home, their defense would have been weakened, their focus split and the tide could have turned for the worse years ago. It didn’t take the sting away. That hurt would be burrowed into her skin for a while to come. She just couldn’t put aside how the fosters treated her in that other world. Not yet. But she couldn’t argue with what was happening and why they did what they did. Swallow the pill and get it done.

“Do you see now what is at stake?”

Jareth kept his gaze out the window, his eyes focusing on nothing, and Maiae followed his look. The Goblin King’s kingdom laid bare. She’d trekked through a small portion of it, rife with life, struggling to survive. Maybe she’d see her own kingdom one day, her real home. She hoped she got the chance.

She turned back to look at Jareth’s profile and said, “Yes, I do.”

He looked at her then, life sparking back in his exhausted eyes. He stood up straighter and let himself lift off his fingertips.

“I—I still have a lot going on,” Maiae touched her temple, “in here and it doesn’t mean I’ll just forget my other life.” She looked out to the Labyrinth again and soaked it in. She wanted to walk through it again, absorb its power and use to vanquish the Dissenters hell-bent on destroying it. “But this world must be saved.” She looked to Jareth, held his ice blue stare. “I won’t let it die.”

Lips cracked around crooked teeth and a smile etched itself into his cheeks. It cradled his eyes and made his own inner light shine brighter. He crossed his arms over his chest and rooted his feet into the ground. Her words brought back the proud, haughty Jareth she knew and it made her stand up a little straighter too. Defeated, rundown Jareth hurt to look at. It was like the fall of a star, tragically beautiful to behold but nothing you could do to save it. Maiae didn’t like feeling so helpless in the face of his waning strength.

“Excellent. Let’s get a move on, shall we?”


End file.
